A History of Silicon Valley
This biography is an appendix to my book "A History of Silicon Valley"
Biographies
| History pages
| Editor
| Correspondence
(Copyright © 2009 Piero Scaruffi)
Thomas Siebel
Thomas Siebel (Illinois, 1952) grew up in Chicago and studied
engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until 1983.
In 1984 Siebel joined Oracle, where he became a sales executive.
In 1990 he moved to a multimedia start-up, Cayenne Systems, later renamed
Gain Technology and sold to Sybase in 1992.
In 1993 he and Patricia House started Siebel to market a software application
for sales force automation, the first step towards
Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
It was an evolution of a project implemented at Oracle and called
OASIS (Oracle Automated Sales Information System).
Siebel's IPO made Siebel a billionaire on paper.
He also founded the Siebel Foundation (1996) to fight homelessness and drug addiction.
In 1999 Siebel owned almost 50% of the CRM market.
Oracle acquired Siebel in 2005 for $5.8 billion.
Siebel campaigned for a right-wing candidate in the 2008 elections.
History of Silicon Valley
| Biographies
| History pages
| Editor
| Correspondence
|