EXPERT RESPONSE
Let me dodge a direct answer this way: What we now know as CRM will be largely irrelevant in three years. 2009 will represent a major inflection point in the enterprise software market. SAP's NetWeaver and Enterprise Services Architecture (ESA) will be largely complete and available, and, assuming somewhat charitably that Oracle meets its own deadlines, Oracle Fusion will also be available. At which point the intersection of enterprise software and business functionality will exist in terms of business processes, not artificial, over-arching software "stovepipes," and three-letter acronyms like CRM will largely be irrelevant.
A better question would be: Which vendor will offer the most comprehensive business process library that will allow a company to effectively deal with its customer-related business processes? Of course, I'm going to dodge that one too: We have to wait and see how Oracle will absorb Siebel's technology and how that new functionality will play in the larger Oracle Fusion picture. Right now it's all a little fuzzy. Which means, if I had to base an answer strictly on what is known today, I'd say SAP has the upper hand. But tomorrow is another day, particularly when it comes to Oracle's ever-evolving plans.
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