Company's product road map and pricing is somewhat uncertain Siebel Systems released an updated version on Monday of its Professional Edition, a lower-cost version of its CRM (customer relationship management) software aimed at the midmarket.Siebel Professional Edition 7.8 deepens the software’s connection to Microsoft’s Office applications, adding integration with Microsoft’s Sharepoint collaboration tools and allowing users to directly access Siebel contacts and appointments from Microsoft Outlook. The new version also introduces integration with Siebel Contact OnDemand, Siebel’s hosted software for call routing and other telephone communications infrastructure.Siebel’s Professional Edition debuted in early 2004 and is now used by several hundred organizations, according to Rob Reid, Siebel’s SMB (small and medium business) group vice president. The package includes Siebel’s sales, service and marketing software, with other functionality available as add-on modules. Its price tag is $995 per user, about half the cost of Siebel’s enterprise CRM software, which allows greater scalability. Siebel’s future product road map and pricing is somewhat uncertain right now because of its pending acquisition by Oracle Corp., expected to close early next year. Reid doesn’t anticipate major shakeups for Siebel’s Professional Edition, however.“I can’t speculate on what will happen, but I do not believe that we will be any different than we are now,” Reid said.REFERENCES: Siebel creates cheaper, SMB software version, Dec. 8, 2004 Software Development