Exclusive: Siebel's hosted CRM doesn't rise to the top - Although impressive, nicely priced OnDemand Release 8 falls short on heavyweight features.(Product/Service Evaluation)

A longtime leader in on-premises applications, Siebel Systems has been fighting an uphill battle in the hosted CRM space against powerhouses like Salesforce.com and hot service-centric evangelists like RightNow Technologies. With the latest release of CRM OnDemand, Siebel takes a significant step toward catching up.

The InfoWorld Test Center has an exclusive look at Siebel CRM OnDemand Release 8, including its full call-center option, Contact OnDemand.

OnDemand provides hosted SFA (sales force automation), marketing, and customer-service capabilities, along with an integrated call center, enabling companies to manage communications across customer-facing channels both in-house and remotely. Impressive IVR (interactive voice response) and skills-based routing are also part-and-parcel.

New to this release is team-based collaboration -- including record sharing and group calendaring, as well as relationship charting -- used to carve leads out of existing contacts. And for marketing …