A couple of Siebel users said that Oracle's services operation has equaled and in some cases exceeded that of the former Siebel Software.

Richard Napier, business development manager at InFact Group, a software consulting firm and systems integrator in Plano, Texas, said that software patches and upgrades are easier to locate on the Oracle Web site than they had been on Siebel's. InFact uses Siebel's hosted On-Demand CRM applications. Napier did not attend OpenWorld.

"In all our dealings with Oracle, we notice better communication, more efficiently handled service requests and basically more information [than Siebel offered]," Napier said.

Martin Schneider, an analyst at The 451 Group in New York, said the jury is still out on what Oracle will ultimately gain from its Siebel purchase.

As Fusion develops, the technology that made Siebel desirable to customers could get stripped down as Oracle creates a common CRM application set, he said.