So Oracle is now purchasing Siebel, accelerating the industry consolidation that RedMonk was partly set up to track and contextualise. We don’t cover packaged applications, but with this purchase everything becomes infrastructure.
Its all about services, components and integration.
IBM and SAP both have a real fight on their hands.
Both will spin it differently, but life just got more “interesting” for both the IBM and SAP senior management teams.
Oracle is eyeballing them both. If it can keep existing customers happy its in great shape. Oracle has a real middleware business, based on its database, but increasingly other software as well.
SAP has a real applications business, with some Netweaver marketing and developer outreach on the side.
IBM has middleware, services and hardware, but fewer obvious control points than you would expect. It just lost another major ISV partner.
Microsoft has an embarrassment of software riches, but not so many enterprise control points.
The big question is – who owns the customer account?
Increasingly, at this rate the answer is Oracle. Oracle is concentrating its influence as it concentrates the market.
So Redmond-Armonk Redwood Shores-Walldorf: those are the four key software industry contexts. RedMonk RedWall, eh?
Another obvious loser- the Department of Justice. They aren’t an overseer, they are a talking shop when it comes to regulation.
Of course we have no plans to rename RedMonk but just so you know – we’re watching all these leviathans closely.
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