Siebel CRM on Windows 7

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In the last few weeks we noticed that many of our customers ask us to help them solve Siebel CRM application compatibility issues with Windows 7.

Siebel CRM is widely used by many different companies in many different industries. While Siebel CRM 8 is compatible with Windows 7, the majority of users still have older versions, like Siebel CRM 7 or even Siebel CRM 6. We also found that many of our customers customize the Siebel CRM application to better suit their needs.

Customers are encountering Windows 7 compatibility issues with Siebel for several reasons:

1. Application Customization - most companies customize the reports, layouts, forms, etc of their Siebel implementations. When upgrading to a newer version of the application, these changes cannot be transferred and therefore must be re-written. For this reason, customers tend to stick to older versions of Siebel for long periods of time.
2. Application Compatibility with Internet Explorer - Siebel CRM 7 (or older) requires Internet Explorer 7 (or older) and cannot run with Internet Explorer 8 (or newer). For this reason, customers upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 are encountering compatibility issues.
3. Application Compatibility with Windows 7 - As long as customers stay with Windows XP, they can prevent IE compatibility issues with Siebel by staying on an older version of IE (although even that is a problematic strategy). However, this cannot be achieved when migrating to Windows 7 simply because Internet Explorer 8 is the OLDEST version of IE available on this platform.

So how can InstallFree help?

InstallFree can help in any of these situations by enabling the older versions of Siebel to run on Windows 7 and alongside Internet Explorer 8. In fact, we created the InstallFree 7Bridge product exactly for cases like this. We allow applications to utilize a private, virtual instance of Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and run them on Windows 7 and/or alongside Internet Explorer 8 without any changes. Using 7bridge as a near- to mid- term solution in the process of migrating to Windows 7 has the following key benefits:

1. It keeps the business running during the migration - you can simply continue using the older versions of Siebel while you are migrating to Windows 7. Our technology makes sure that the application can continue to run unchanged on the new OS with no conflicts.
2. It simplifies the migration and reduces time and cost - we eliminate the need to upgrade your instance of Siebel for the purpose of migrating to Windows 7. You can always do this later, but at least you've decoupled these two big projects and made each problem easier to solve individually.
3. It gives you more time to customize Siebel CRM 8 - after you are done with the Windows 7 migration project you will be able to properly evaluate your customization needs and make good decisions regarding how, when and how much to customize.
4. It eases end user transition - by allowing your end users the time to gradually adopt each change (Windows 7, new version of Siebel), you are less likely to face a decrease in productivity and an increase in help desk calls.

If you need more information on how to get started, just click here.

Thanks,

Robert Sampson
Solution Architect