Oracle's US$5.85 billion acquisition of Siebel is set to close Tuesday following a vote by Siebel shareholders. The two companies agreed to the deal in September.
To date, the disposition of Siebel products and technologies, such as its Business Analytics tools and the OnDemand hosted CRM offering, remains unresolved.
Oracle declined to comment for this story, stating that it would prefer to wait until the deal closes. But following the move to buy Siebel, Oracle executives had expressed interest in some of its offerings, including OnDemand, which is hosted on systems from rival IBM.
Despite the lack of a firm plan from Oracle executives, six Siebel users said they are still either upbeat or neutral about the deal. Three said they don't anticipate immediate benefits because they expect the integration of the companies and products to be a complex, long-term project.
"I think this integration is going to take a while," said Mike Thyken, CIO at Select Comfort Corp., a Minneapolis-based mattress retailer that runs the Oracle E-Busines Suite 11i and is installing Siebel's analytics application.
Like a number of users running both vendors' software, Thyken said he hopes that Oracle integrates its ERP software with Siebel's products at some point.
However, Thyken added, large mergers "are big and difficult projects. I rather they take their time and do it right the first time rather than rush a half-baked integration out the door to please analysts."
"We don't have any expectations that this is going to be a quick merger," noted Robert Martens, director of global front-office technology at Ingersoll-Rand Co.
The Hamilton, Bermuda-based provider of services and products to the transportation and other industries runs Siebel CRM, both in-house and through the OnDemand hosted format.
In the near term, Martens said he hopes Oracle, which provides his company with back-end ERP software, will create an OnDemand "global solution" by adding data centers throughout the world.
At the same time, Oracle is running the risk that some Siebel customers will turn to other vendors as it works on an integration plan.
"A number of customers are in a wait-and-see mode," said Rob Bois, an analyst at Boston-based AMR Research Inc. "They're evaluating potential alternatives" just in case Oracle moves in a direction they don't like.
On the other hand, noted Bois, replacing Siebel wouldn't be an easy task because many users have heavily customized the software. Any migration to a new supplier could take years, he said.
"Obviously, there is risk [that users will flee] with any acquisition like this," said Marc Hebert, executive vice president of Fremont, Calif.-based Sierra Atlantic Inc. and a user of Siebel CRM OnDemand and Oracle Financials software.
Oracle must undertake the same type of outreach done with the earlier PeopleSoft acquisition to avoid losing customers, he said.
"They need to make it as clear about [what] they are doing with Siebel as they did last year with PeopleSoft," Hebert said.