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Oracle announced that it would aggressively market Siebel CRM On Demand in India during FY08. It said it had identified eight new partners to market and resell Siebel CRM On Demand, including Wipro, Blue Star, Sonat, HCL Technologies, Bhriguse, Datamatics, Code Theatre and Apps Infortech.

Will Bosma, Vice President of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Oracle Asia Pcaific, said that with this, companies of all sizes, large, medium and small would have access to the best CRM solutions in the world at an affordable price without having to maintain a large in-house IT team.

In India, Oracle’s partners will combine Siebel CRM On Demand applications together with business consulting, technical and service support to address opportunities in key markets and industries.

Bosma said the recent new customer wins included Infact, Code Theatre and Sierra Atlantic in India, Carat Jewellery and The Miramar Group In Hong Kong and South City Crokers in Australia. The company expects to see continuing momentum in its on demand CRM business in India.

He added that the key drivers of that business would be as significant ramp up in joint go-to-market activity with key partners and a continued focus on delivering greater value to its customers through unique value propositions such as Oracle CRM On Demand private edition and partner licencing option.

The CRM market in Asia Pacific is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 18.9 percent between 2006 and 2011 to reach $846.4 million in total sorfware revenue.

Henning Kagermann, Chairman and CEO, SAP said that SAP AG plans to invest $1 billion in India over the next five years, to expand its research facilities and tap more Indian customers. The German business software major SAP AG said that it will remain invested in Indian even it the labour cost go up.

Mr.Kagermann said that they were not in India because of the cheap labour but for high quality of workforce. He said that they would remain in India even if the labour cost goes up. Mr.Kagermann is in India to participate in the first-ever executive board meeting of the company in the country.

Last year Mr.Kagermann was quoted by German edition of the Financial Times as saying theat rising labour costs in India were forcing him to start looking to other countries. Mr.Kagermann had said that India is slowly getting expensive. He said that they have decided to hire a certain number there, and then start looking at other locations.

In India there are a concerns that as the labour costs go up, companies in US and Europe will start looking towards countries like the Philippines that are offering low cost labour. Mr.Kagermann said that SAP AG is committed to invest $1 billion in India by 2010. A major portion of the investment is targeted at expanding the company’s global development, service and support hub in India, SAP’s Labs.

SAP’s Labs two centres in Bangalore and Gurgaon are the company’s second largest research and development facilities after Germany. SAP AG right now has 4235 employees in India out of which 3500 are working in SAP Labs.

Mr.Kagermann said that the It sector in India is estimated to be around $27-32 billion by 2010. Mr.Kagermann this was the is a significant reason for them to be present there. The company has doubled its customer base to 2000 in India in one year.

The share of Indian IT services providers in the UK’s IT/ITeS market on a high growth mode, having tripled their revenues in the last four years, according to a consulting firm. According to Ovum, a research and consulting firm Driven by sustained demand for offshoring capability and lower prices, the country (India) has tripled its share of top 50 revenues since 2003 and now has four representatives - TCS, Wipro, Infosys and HCL - in our rankings.

According to the latest results of the Indian IT services companies, Infosys garnered 26.8% of its revenues from Europe, while it is 30% for Wipro. For TCS, UK alone contributes 19.9% of its revenues, while all of Europe accounts for 27.7%. HCL Technologies generates 28.8% of its revenues from Europe.

However, Ovum said that despite the growth of Indian players, their market share remains pretty low at just 5% of the combined revenues of the top 50 companies. In contrast, Japan with just one representative in Fujitsu, still claims a bigger slice of the UK top 50 than India.

Indian IT services have been constantly speaking about increasing their market share in Europe through both organic and inorganic routes. As of now, more than 80% of Indain Companies’ Europe revenues come from the UK. Recently, Infosys announced the takeover of Philips’ BPO business, which fetched for it a centre in Poland.

Wipro on the other hand, has been talking about making an acquisition in Europe to strengthen its presence there, having already made a couple of buyouts. TCS, meanwhile, had acquired UK’s Pearl BPO in 2005.

In the overall UK market, EDS has taken the number one spot from IBM. But the US giants re losing market share.