Oracle Siebel Roadmap 2013-2019 (and onwards?)

In a recent partner conference call with Christian von Stengel (EMEA Head of Application Strategy and Sales) and Uma Welingkar (Senior Director of Oracle Siebel Product Development), we were shown the Oracle Siebel roadmap for the coming 6 years (2013-2019).

Even with the usual Oracle “Safe Harbour” statement (“[…] The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle’s products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle. […]”), it still provides a very compelling picture:

Oracle Siebel Roadmap to 2019.

We believe that the main points here for the Siebel partner community are:

• Siebel is still very much alive and kicking, along with other Applications Unlimited product lines. Oracle report that a substantial proportion of Siebel implementations are successfully keeping up with the latest Siebel versions (77% are using 8.1.x or 8.2.x) and, as such, Oracle are committed to continued investment in the Siebel product line in the form of Innovation Packs (IP) and new versions (see next item).
• As we noted before, Siebel version 8.3 is on the roadmap, as well as Siebel 8.4. Again, this is subject to the Safe Harbour statement, but given the fact that Premier Support for 8.1 and 8.2 run to 2016 (2019 with Extended Support), we could expect from this roadmap to see Siebel going well into the 2020s. If this does not put to rest some premature rumours of Siebel’s death, then it is difficult to see what would.
• Another interesting aspect is the fact that there is only one Siebel version going forward, so 8.1 and 8.2 branches will in all probability be merged. Given that Siebel’s core is mostly a stable product among many other Oracle product lines that offer complementary features, we expect that the coming versions of Siebel will be full of productized integrations (with Marketing Cloud, Social Cloud, Service Cloud, …).

Apart from these highlights, it was also made clear that much of the innovation around CX relies heavily on the new OpenUI framework. It is indeed exciting to see all the new interfaces (including the famous “Facebook” OpenUI theme by Oracle’s Andrew Keleher and our own work on it) and also how OpenUI is great at cross-device UI design and leveraging native device features (GPS, touch, phone, …).

Other interesting topics that were mentioned include mobile channels, internal social collaboration with OSN, multi-channel campaign execution, social sharing, social marketing, a revamped loyalty engine, and listening and responding to social conversations, to name a few.

If you would like to know more about the Siebel Roadmap or any of the topics mentioned above, give us a call or drop us an email.