Leading online higher education organization avoids unnecessary upgrade; achieves significant savings; and gains broader, optimized support for heavily customized software
LAS VEGAS, October 30, 2017 – Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of enterprise software products and services, and the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products, today announced that Open Universities Australia (OUA) has selected Rimini Street to support its heavily customized Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions platform. By switching to Rimini Street support, the organization is able to continue to leverage its robust Oracle applications for a minimum of 15 years, save significant annual costs, and receive robust, comprehensive support, without any required upgrades to stay on support.
Established in 1993, OUA’s primary goal is to connect students to degree programs offered by leading Australia universities via its online higher education platform. Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions is OUA’s student management system, which supports over 50,000 students. OUA’s system is heavily customized to suit the specific requirements of an online higher education marketplace. The platform is used for enrollment, retaining student records and exam results, providing historical information on what a student has studied and what they are planning to study as part of their enrollment services to provider universities.
Extended Software Investment Lifespan without Required Upgrades
When Oracle placed OUA’s current, mature and well-functioning release into Oracle Sustaining Support with its high cost and reduced service provision, OUA began exploring alternative support options to continue support on its current release and avoid an expensive, labor-intensive and disruptive upgrade project.
“Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions is a core system for us, so when Oracle stopped full support for our current release it presented us with a huge challenge; not only were we getting very limited support from Oracle for our software for expensive annual fees, but on top of that Oracle doesn’t support any of our customizations with their standard maintenance program,” said Rob Pickering, head of IT, Open Universities Australia. “Further, upgrading our existing software release presented too many risks and costs with too little ROI, and was definitely not an option. We estimated that we would only use 20% of the latest PeopleSoft Campus Solutions release. By leveraging the long-term, comprehensive support services offered by Rimini Street, we now have an even more robust support model and service for our existing production software release, support for our customizations and a guaranteed, minimum additional 15 years of comprehensive support without any required upgrades – an excellent solution that gives us tremendous value and peace of mind.”
A More Comprehensive and Cost-Effective Support Service
As well as providing a more comprehensive support service at up to a 90% savings on total annual maintenance costs, Rimini Street has tax, legal and regulatory delivery capabilities for nearly 200 countries; support for customizations; security, integration and interoperability support services; and innovation and roadmap services – all at no additional cost.
In addition to the other Rimini Street service program benefits, OUA now also has an assigned senior level Primary Support Engineer (PSE) with over a decade of PeopleSoft product line experience, and 24/7/365 support coverage to address any support issues. OUA also receives the Company’s industry-leading SLA guarantee of 15-minute response time for critical cases.
“We are able to speak straight away to our Primary Support Engineer who is familiar with our environment and customizations rather than having to go fight our way through a helpdesk and various levels of escalation to get our issues resolved,” noted Pickering. “The service responsiveness and level of technical expertise that we have received since moving to Rimini Street is superior to what we had experienced from Oracle support. We are now speaking with qualified, senior engineers inside of 15 minutes of a request for assistance.”
“Companies such as OUA who are trapped on Oracle Sustaining Support are receiving even less ROI than Oracle’s full service offering, and often paying even more exorbitant fees,” said Andrew Powell, managing director, Rimini Street APAC. “Experienced, well informed companies across all industries are taking back control of their roadmap by engaging Rimini Street support as a strategy to avoid undesired, costly, and low ROI upgrades for a minimum of 15 additional years of guaranteed support availability on their current software release, obtain a much more robust and responsive support service, and drive maximum ROI on their current software release investment. Our clients extend the life of their existing systems at a lower TCO and free up funds for innovation and growth.”