3. What are the alternatives? CRM-customer relationship management-is quickly becoming a standard of operation for companies that want to do great target marketing and positioning and develop closer customer relationships. Ideally, CRM gets you to a "segment-of-one"-or one-to-one marketing-but where does a firm go to get the tools to make this happen? Fortunately, several companies specialize in providing the sophisticated data management software needed to do successful CRM. Those companies include industry heavy hitters Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle. Oracle recently acquired the world's biggest player in CRM, Siebel Systems. Siebel is widely credited with creating the CRM market in the 1990s. Oracle was founded in 1977 by Larry Ellison, Bob Miner, and Ed Oates to provide database management software to business clients. Ellison has served as the proverbial "public face" of Oracle for many years and currently is Chairman and CEO. Since its founding, Oracle has expanded its product line to also include software that runs finance, human relations, inventory, and (of course) CRM operations. Oracle boasts that 98 of Fortune 100 firms use its products. In addition, although Oracle had a CRM software product of its own for some time prior to the Siebel acquisition, the $5.85 billion purchase of Siebel gave Oracle a phenomenal shot in the arm within this lucrative market. However, the success that Oracle will have from this purchase depends largely on the company's ability to integrate the Siebel CRM software capabilities with those of Oracle's existing products, and ultimately effectively position its new product line for the right target markets.