Siebel's Surprise Sets Backdrop for New CEO

Analyst Henry Morris, of market research company IDC, said the increased push in business analytics, and changes to the architecture of its application software "are where the company needs to go in the future."

Siebel already plays in the business intelligence space (software to help extract data from corporate databases) but because Lawrie gave the matter so much weight in his keynote address, and because much of the convention is devoted to that topic, it's likely that Siebel will become more of a competitior to so-called pure-play business intelligence vendors like Business Objects(BOBJ Quote) and Cognos(COGN Quote).

Simply put, Siebel will be redesigning its software to give users more flexibility and make business processes easier to change on the fly. And that, in turn, will give Siebel a weapon to fight software's largest players, such as IBM and SAP(SAP Quote).