What started as a cute marketing slogan -- "Just say no to software" -- may turn out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. The herd of CRM and ERP ASPs is growing stronger not only in services and features but also in number of customers. And as the herd grows stronger, it's fissuring over whether customers are best served by specialized, industry-specific applications or the tools to customize hosted services for their particular needs.
In an exclusive to InfoWorld, Siebel Systems revealed that it will unveil an on-demand version of its UAN (Universal Application Network) platform later this year. UAN for OnDemand, now in trials, will officially become available this fall, said Keith Raffel, group vice president of products at Siebel CRM OnDemand.
"With UAN for OnDemand you can integrate with SAP or Oracle right down to Quickbooks, and we will host it," Raffel said.
UAN is the moniker for Siebel's integration platform, which, according to Raffel, does more than just connect applications to the Siebel infrastructure. UAN offers prebuilt connections to applications that can be reused and will speed deployment.
Siebel's plans come as a counter to Salesforce.com, which earlier this month upped the ASP ante by previewing Multiforce, a so-called multitasking technology due in June that will allow customers to run simultaneous on-demand applications on the Salesforce.com site. In addition, because the solutions are built on sforce they share the same data, security model, and interface.
With the release of sforce, Customforce, and now Multiforce, Salesforce.com is taking the view that, for the most part, companies do not need industry-specific applications and would rather customize in-house. To that end, Salesforce.com offers a customization toolbox with Customforce and exposes its APIs through sforce.
But Siebel's Raffel said that Salesforce.com is running against the tide and that companies are demanding industry-specific solutions.
Blending both sides of the argument, NetSuite last Thursday detailed NetFlex, a platform for customizing NetSuite applications. Earlier this month the company also released a vertical application, NetCRM-Services Edition, tailored for accounting, medical, and other professional services.
"Our strategy is to provide some core functionalities and then make it so customers have to do as little customization as possible," said Zach Nelson, NetSuite CEO.
Regardless of the ASP, customization carries a price tag. The tools and ability to customize even hosted applications requires a costly upgrade and hiring new IT personnel, both of which counter the original intent of subscribing to an ASP.
GuildQuality, a provider of customer-satisfaction surveying for builders, uses NetSuite but also maintains a Salesforce.com account, "for posterity's sake, because we don't want to leave it behind," said CEO Gregory Hanson.
Hanson explained that just subscribing to the customization tools and features would have required significant upgrades and other expenses.
"We didn't want to have to hire an engineer," Hanson said.
Liz Herbert, an analyst at Forrester Research, said that Salesforce.com is starting to address the trend is for industry-specific applications.
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