According to Barney Beal, company leaders at Oracle used today's product announcement to challenge other hosted CRM vendors on pricing and on features. For "Release 16" of Oracle CRM On Demand, programmers focused on usability, reporting, and industry-specific customization. CRM software experts note that three of this releases most important updates are designed to give Oracle a strategic advantage over Salesforce.com and other cloud-based CRM systems.
No "Nickel and Diming." Company leaders told the press that hosted CRM clients have become tired of paying extra for simple add-ons. Instead, Release 16 now offers an unlimited number of "custom objects."
Single Tenancy with Benefits. Maintaining your own hardware and software installation appeals to companies that like the idea of hosted CRM applications, but don't want the risk of company data being stored at third party server farms. However, running a parallel installation of popular CRM applications often means waiting for new features, upgrades, and security fixes. Release 16 now features a coordinated updating tool that allows "single tenant" clients access to updates and patches at the same time as Oracle's other subscribers.
On Site Solutions. Now that updates and patches can be centrally coordinated, Oracle's site-specific deployment service appeals to privacy-sensitive firms more than ever. Although an on-site CRM application with dedicated servers doesn't fit the standard definition of "hosted CRM," end users and administrators enjoy many of the same benefits.
These three features can help get some CIOs revisiting the idea of hosted CRM, even if the "cloud" lives within one of their company's own buildings. As competition heats up for business in the hosted CRM arena, industry watchers can't wait to see what new pricing tiers and service innovations will emerge over the next year in response to Oracle's announcements.
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