Just as the consumer world has won the “right to repair” battle in many US states, so too has Rimini Street been winning the war against restrictive and expensive first-party support and forced new version, cloud and subscription upgrades since its founding in 2005, with its third-party support genuinely a time, resources and money saving option for thousands of companies worldwide.
Late in May 2024, I interviewed Luiz Mariotto, Rimini Street’s Global Vice President for SAP Support, who previously worked for 15 years at SAP Brazil. We discussed the dilemma facing users of SAP, where thousands of organisations who use SAP ECC as their core ERP system, on-prem, will be out of support next year – or in 2027 – and how there is a genuine alternative to SAP’s forced and expensive upgrade plan.
For those who want to know more about Rimini Street, and its solutions and achievements, please read on below and for plenty of extra information, and whether you’re familiar with Rimini Street or not, please watch the video interview below!
So, who is Rimini Street?
As the company states in its boilerplate text in its media releases, Rimini Street is “a global provider of end-to-end enterprise software support, products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software and a Salesforce and AWS partner.”
But back in February, Rimini Street expanded its operations further, broadening the range of programs and platforms it supports with its Rimini Custom service. And just last month, as Luiz explains in the video interview, Rimini Street now also offers comprehensive support, security and consulting services for VMware products, expanding even further the scope of enterprise software it supports today.
So much so that the second part of the company’s boilerplate now reads as follows: “The Company has operations globally and offers a comprehensive family of unified solutions to run, manage, support, customise, configure, connect, protect, monitor, and optimise enterprise application, database, and technology software, and enables clients to achieve better business outcomes, significantly reduce costs and reallocate resources for innovation.”
This is a big claim, but Rimini Street has been delivering since 2005 with more than 5,000 customers globally, saving them an estimated $8 billion in costs and lowering support costs by up to 90%. So, it’s no wonder the big software vendors are not happy with third party support vendors, who provide an alternate path for organisations that don’t want to be forced into upgrades, face subscription-based licensing and increased costs, or carry concerns over their mission critical customisations!
Companies that would previously have been putting a ton of resources into upgrades, are now using savings from Rimini Street to focus resources on strategic projects and better supporting customers and investing technologies like AI.
What is the SAP Dilemma?
Thousands of organisations who use SAP ECC as their core ERP system on-prem will be out of support next year, or in 2027.
To extend support, SAP wants them to migrate to the cloud on RISE with SAP. However, and this is the dilemma, many (two thirds according to Gartner) are not comfortable with a forced migration.
There are many reasons why they’re not comfortable: now is not the right time to move to a managed cloud service, they don’t want to be forced, they want more time to assess their options, they have other strategic IT priorities, they cannot justify the cost and have risk concerns, and they’re worried about the impact on customisations. Clients are also frustrated because SAP is saying they cannot receive future innovations, such as AI, if they don’t move from on-prem.
According to Luiz Mariotto, thousands of clients don’t want to be on SAP’s roadmap – and want to continue with their current setup. They can now get third party support from an organisation like Rimini Street.
This video shows the Top 10 Global IT Insights, Strategies, and Trends as Rimini Street observes:
Here is a summary of the questions and topics I covered with Luiz Mariotto:
– I start introducing Luiz, welcoming him to the program, and asked him to give us a refresher and recap on the Rimini Street story in 2024.
– Next, Luiz reminded us of his personal experience in the SAP space enabling him to understand SAP users very deeply.
– We then delved into the big issues facing companies using the SAP ERP Central Component or SAP ECC platform on-prem, with some set to lose support next year, and others in 2027, and why this is a big dilemma.
– Knowing that that Rimini Street offers third-party support services to SAP customers, we looked at how Rimini Street provided a solution that takes into account customisations, and whether Rimini Street’s services also enable the ability to access innovations like AI now, or in the future.
– We then looked at the type of cost savings SAP customers could expect, noting of course that every organisation is clearly different.
– Luiz shared some of the customers using Rimini Street in Australia and globally, after which he shared what else we needed to know about the “forced” migration from SAP, the frustrations and concerns this brings, and how else Rimini Street can help – as well as questions companies facing the same SAP dilemma should ask themselves.
– Noting Luiz has been travelling to different continents including last week and this week here in Australia and New Zealand, he shared what brought him here and how he sees the rest of this year unfolding for Rimini Street and support for SAP, and through to the end of this decade.
– We ended with my usual last questions on memories of his first computer, great advice received in life, and his final message to the viewers and readers.
So, please watch the video interview at the start of this article for more information!
Rimini Street’s YouTube channel is here, below are some select videos from the collection:
Strategic IT Partner:
Pacific Textiles:
AEM:
MYOB:
