What to Expect with Rimini Street Support and Services

Traditionally, vendor support for enterprise software has been notoriously expensive and underwhelming. Annual fees are typically 20%-23% of the original license fee, and you can incur annual increases at the vendor’s discretion.   

Software vendors tend to deprecate full support for major and minor releases within a few years after general availability. That’s good for the software vendor because they no longer have service obligations to deliver security patches, compatibility updates or tax, legal and regulatory updates. Yet even with diminished services, vendors typically do not reduce annual support fees and sometimes increase them over time.  

That’s not great news for customers. The useful lifespan of enterprise software often surpasses the end-of-support dates imposed by the vendors. To stay fully supported, clients are required by the vendor to upgrade to a newer release more frequently than is necessary based on the stability of the existing release. This can sometimes lead to great cost and disruption for the client and is compounded when considering the skills, integrations and customizations that have been built up. 

At Rimini Street, we see things differently. Software that’s working doesn’t need to be patched or upgraded to be fully supported, especially since software is often heavily customized to meet your specific organizational challenges and goals. 

An upgrade to a newer release or a migration to a newer product should only be undertaken if it has a business justification and a positive ROI.  

Until then, we’ll support your existing release for at least 15 years from the time you come to Rimini Street. And that includes the tax, legal and regulatory updates you need to stay compliant.  

You should have full flexibility and freedom to decide when, or even if, you want to upgrade or migrate. It’s your business and your roadmap, not your software vendor’s – and Rimini Street is here to support you on your roadmap journey by “delivering extraordinary technology solutions powered by extraordinary people that achieve each client’s strategic, operational and financial goals.”  

“One of our goals was to become more flexible in our PeopleSoft applications’ upgrade strategy to be able to decide when and how we upgrade these tools. By archiving the PeopleSoft updates we were already entitled to, we were able to complete an upgrade while on independent support — and do it on our own timeline. If we want to upgrade in the future, that’s a choice we can make without outside pressure.”

— Steve Jacobs, Director, IT, Guest Services

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Rimini Street was built on the concept that companies deserve a superior service experience that is high in value, but smart in cost. From offering a named, primary support engineer to help our clients receive both faster ticket resolution and a personalized experience, to hiring only the best, top talent with deep knowledge of complex systems, coupled with a heart of customer service, Rimini Street stood apart from competitors and continues to set the highest standards as the global leader of enterprise software support.  

With Rimini Street, clients enjoy: 

• Care from a deep bench of experienced support engineers at the ready, around the clock and around the globe. 
• Person-to-person handoffs between engineers, not just through call notes. 
• Support for customizations, appreciated for their uniqueness to your competitive advantage. 
• Preservation of the priority level of your cases.  
• Frequent progress updates to keep you informed on your case resolution. 
• Peace of mind knowing that existing software versions are supported for up to 15 years or more. This includes tax, legal and regulatory updates. 
• Seamless integrated support and managed services from one trusted partner with intimate knowledge of your systems for faster, seamless service and resolution. 

In addition, our team is backed by cutting-edge, patented and patent-pending AI systems and processes that elevate the human-to-human interaction that our clients cherish. As a result, our clients have rated Rimini Support™ 4.9/5 (where 5 is excellent) based on thousands of case resolution surveys. 

In short, our engineers love what they do. And so do our clients.  

When it comes to an organization’s mission-critical systems, every second counts. Downtime is expensive, impacting sales, employee productivity, the experience of clients, and ultimately, your brand. The sooner a critical issue gets reported and fixed, the faster you’re back up to full speed and back to business.  

That’s why Rimini Street offers industry-leading SLAs for responsiveness. For Priority 1 (P1) critical cases, we guarantee a response within 10 minutes. Our systems and processes are built to deliver, with alerts and alarms that set off immediate action. 

A 10-minute response guarantee for P1 cases is amazing, but it gets even better: In 2023, for both P1 and P2 cases, our average response time was blazing fast at less than 90 seconds!

“My team members do not even have time to go and make a cup of coffee, that is how fast Rimini Street gets back to its customers.” 

— Marhalisa Matari, Senior Manager, IT Application Management, Proton

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Enterprise software is complex — no two ERPs are alike. Searching the web, knowledge bases and community forums for solutions to specific issues can be time-consuming, unproductive and ultimately unhelpful. We believe it’s far better to dig in with an experienced engineer right from the start. 

That’s why we put our best and brightest people on the front line, establishing direct engagement between clients and our expert engineers as soon as possible.  

“At Philippine Airlines, our tagline translates as ‘complete, wholehearted service and care.’ That’s why we appreciate how Rimini Street takes care of us the same way. Oracle would frequently just point us to the online knowledge repository to figure out how to handle an issue. Digitization and self-service are good, but we are human beings, so working collaboratively in real time with an expert is more effective. With Rimini Street, we know we can pick up the phone and find help.”

— Wilson Go, CIO, Philippine Airlines

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With a service delivery team of more than 1,200 experts in 17 countries, we provide support 24/7/365. For Priority 1 and Priority 2 cases, we execute a follow-the-sun process, where our engineers “swarm” to resolve cases with optimal engineer assignments based on time zone, experience, skills and language. Seamless “warm” handoffs of open cases – consisting of live, engineer-to-engineer conversations –happen around the clock and around the globe. Our model also includes case “time-shifting” to align our interactions and updates with the client’s preferred time zone. 

“Unisys applications are central and global, so they cover every part of the world, every region in the world. So, all of that is supported by Rimini Street… It’s a global support model.” 

— Upinder Phanda, VP & CIO, Unisys Corporation

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One of our clients runs 53 Oracle modules and their respective databases. In one year, the client opened 309 support cases, and those cases were resolved by 177 engineers in 12 countries. Imagine having that depth and breadth of expertise in your corner without incurring the cost to put them on your payroll.  

Rimini Street attracts and retains top talent around the world for Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, IBM and other enterprise software. Our engineers relish the opportunity to apply their lifetime body of experience to help resolve client issues quickly. 

Our retention of support engineers is better than industry averages because of the nature of the work, location flexibility and the support systems we provide to help our engineers and their leaders really shine for our clients. That’s reflected in our 4.9/5 average client satisfaction score, collected from thousands of responses to case closure surveys. 

“The person that supports us on advanced supply chain planning has been working on it for over 20 years. He’s tops, tops in the book.”

— Joe Cannella, CIO, Tempel Steel

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And no case is too small for Rimini Street. One of the aspects clients like most about our support service is how we handle Priority 4 “how to” cases. The same experts who resolve your complex, high-priority cases are also available to help you figure out how to do something in your software. Sometimes it’s those “head-scratching” issues that could dramatically improve productivity, if only you could talk it through with an expert. We’re happy to take on these cases. 

When you report an issue, you deserve to know what’s happening with it every step of the way. Rimini Street guarantees a regular cadence of case update communications based on case severity. It’s the only known SLA like it in the industry.  

• For Priority 1, critical cases, you get a progress update every two hours around the clock.  
• For Priority 2, serious cases, it’s every four business hours. 

That regularity requires systems, training and accountability within our service delivery teams. We take it very seriously and achieve exceptional results for our clients. In 2023 alone, we are proud to have delivered 510,513 case update communications with 99.99% on-time performance.  

No matter what applications and databases you run, protecting them against data breaches and negative operational impact is job number one. The Rimini Protect™ portfolio of services and solutions is highly effective and proactive. We focus on improving security postures and mitigating security risk exposure, which reduces downtime when compared to more traditional approaches.  

Even before leaving vendor support, it is common for organizations to run older versions of software that don’t have new vendor security patches available. This may be due to the support package they have with the vendor, which may not offer patches as part of its offerings. As a result, many of these organizations have already established other defensive strategies to protect their enterprise software.  

After leaving vendor support, clients no longer have access to new updates, including security patches. Thousands of our clients, including government agencies, national defense programs, healthcare services and many others, don’t receive new vendor patches, and remain confident in their security posture with the support of Rimini Street.  

Rimini Protect solutions are personalized to a client’s ecosystem, to complement and enhance our clients’ existing security strategies to protect against known and unknown threats and vulnerabilities. And we do so without requiring the application of vendor-provided security patches or modification of vendor code.  

To help improve your overall security posture and mitigate your security risk exposure, our team of security experts can craft a personalized security solution specifically designed for your enterprise software environment. We carefully select and configure the most effective tools from our portfolio to complement your risk-based vulnerability management strategy, a combination that results in significant strengthening of our clients’ mission-critical systems.  

“Within the first month of deploying Rimini ProtectTM for SAP, we found several vulnerabilities which were quickly corrected. We never would have discovered all of these issues by just applying security patches.“ 

— Jeff Miller, Director, Business Relationship Management, NIBCO®

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Enterprise software releases can perform their intended function for many years. At the same time, things change around them, and the software needs to adapt. 

Two areas of frequent change are: 

• Operating environments (operating systems, middleware, browsers, email systems, etc.) 
• Tax, legal and regulatory requirements 

The useful life of enterprise software often extends beyond the time that the software vendor provides full support, which includes updates for compatibility, integration and regulatory changes. Vendors push upgrading to a newer version of the software as a solution, but this comes at a great cost and disruption to the business which can delay business progress as resources of people, time and money get locked into the never-ending cycle.  

We see it differently. And we make it easy. With Rimini Support™, tax, legal and regulatory updates are included for at least 15 years from the time you contract with Rimini Street. 

“I have noticed that we are getting more relevant, consistent tax and regulatory updates from Rimini Street before Oracle even releases theirs, so we have been very pleased with that.”

— Jim Williamson, VP, IT, ESCO Corporation

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We also support your software in its existing environment for at least 15 years. Going a step further (which we love to do!), we offer a suite of solutions called Rimini Connect™ that allow you to upgrade your operating systems, browsers and email integrations without upgrading your software. With Rimini Connect™, vendor “compatibility matrices” are a thing of the past, no longer restricting you from modernizing, requiring an upgrade or foregoing full support. 

Rimini Connect™ for Browsers is a Rimini Street patented solution. Learn about it firsthand from its inventor, Desmond Whitt, in this video. 

“With Rimini Street, Officeworks is protected against current and future browser compatibility challenges and able to achieve the same functionality it needed to experience, but through other browsers such as Chrome or Edge. Now we can rest assured knowing our internal team members are no longer impacted in their ability to serve our valued customers due to browser related obstacles.”

— Michael Howard, COO, Officeworks Ltd

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Navigating the best path forward for your IT strategy and digital transformation isn’t easy. It is wise to include outside advisors who know the territory, who have successfully guided other similar organizations and who will put your interests first. 

As an independent, third-party service provider, Rimini Street provides an objective, vendor-agnostic and technology-agnostic perspective trusted by thousands of leading organizations, including those ranked in the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 100. We start with understanding your business objectives and offer guidance on what mix of vendors, technologies and alternatives can get you there.  

Whatever your preferred deployment — cloud, on-premises or hybrid — whatever your licensing preference — perpetual, subscription or open source — we’ll help you discover and consider the alternatives that have the highest likelihood of achieving your objectives.  

We call that your Rimini Smart Path™.  

Over the years, we have helped many successful organizations adopt a composable ERP strategy, innovating around the edges by first extending the lifetime value of core and customized systems of record and then surrounding them with cutting-edge systems of innovation. Modern technologies for integrating applications and data and orchestrating business processes across functions have made this strategy viable and a true opportunity to build and deliver a competitive advantage. 

“Our ambition is to deliver an IT roadmap that is driven by business needs, avoiding huge investments and the risks of migrating to other platforms including the disruption to our business and the risk that the IT systems supporting our train network would go down. Knowing that we have Rimini Street as a trusted strategic partner, ensuring the stability of our core SAP system, means we have the confidence and capacity to focus on the execution and further development of our business goals.”

— Ingo Paas, CIO, Green Cargo

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You may have already heard the phrase “best of breed.” It refers to a solution or offering that is focused in a specific area and is a more personalized, impactful option than the alternatives that are offered in generalized solutions. Rimini Street has earned a market-leading position for offering a best-of-breed combination of support and related services for mission-critical production software. 

Whether it’s for support, managed services, security, interoperability or professional services, one call to Rimini Street initiates an unparalleled service experience. Unlike software vendors, we don’t just support one vendor’s software. We offer support and services for hundreds of applications and databases from Oracle, SAP, Salesforce, VMware, IBM, Microsoft, open source and more. We consider your software landscape as a whole, ensuring every piece works together to drive measurable business outcomes. 

We also provide support for your customizations, unlike typical vendor support which considers customizations as a roadblock. During onboarding with Rimini Street, we’ll get to know your systems, how you configured them, your business processes and the customizations unique to your business.  

Your custom systems and setup are your business fingerprints. They are important to you, so they’re important to us. We’ve got you covered. 

“My day-to-day team appreciates that when we put in a ticket to Rimini Street, whether it is customized code or Oracle, an engineer comes on the call, works along with us, and then helps us get down to the bottom of it, which was not the case with Oracle. Rimini Street really ticked all the checkboxes of what we wanted to do.”

— Raj Velpuru, Vice President, Application, GES

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Unlike most system integrators, we provide both managed services (ITIL Levels 2 and 3: running, managing, optimizing) and product support (ITIL Level 4: fixing and answering questions). This unified experience helps get issues resolved by eliminating delays and finger-pointing between providers. Whatever the issue is, we’ll work on it across our teams to get it fixed.  

On top of that, our professional services can take on project-based work to help you get full value from your implemented systems. Because of our unique position in supporting, managing, connecting, securing and monitoring complex systems that span the globe and most every industry, we have the innate knowledge accumulated to help our clients navigate the road ahead with confidence.  

Whether you need to optimize, evolve or transform your IT roadmap, “We’ll Get You There.”™ 

“…With Rimini Street’s rapid response and proactive problem-solving approach, we now have a more agile partner supporting the stable operation of our mission-critical enterprise software in the cloud – all under a single roof.”

— Seongyeon Park, ERP Team Leader, Korean Air

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From the beginning, we knew that to scale our level of human-first engagement, responsiveness, personalization, communication and fast issue resolution, we would need powerful technology to enable our extraordinary engineers to become “super engineers,” as coined by our Global Service Delivery executives.  

In 2018 — long before ChatGPT — we began developing proprietary AI applications, designed to help our engineers and leaders be even better at what they do. Case Assignment Advisor, a patented Rimini Street application, ingests over 35 vectors of information about a case and about our engineering team and then recommends the top engineers to assign to the case. What used to take a manager 20 minutes is now accomplished in under four seconds. Another Rimini Street application, C-Signal, uses natural language processing (NLP) and other indicators to evaluate cases in progress. 

The result for our clients?  

• Case Assignment Advisor helped reduce case resolution times by 23%.  
• C-Signal reduced the number of cases that develop urgency by 29%. 

We continue to invest thoughtfully in systems to support our engineers and deliver unparalleled levels of service to our clients. From new case notifications through case management, and from tax, legal, and regulatory research to the delivery of tailored communications and software updates, we’ve implemented a suite of systems that are second-to-none in the industry.  

And with Rimini Street’s Innovation Team leading the way, our clients continue to benefit from our commitment to their success, today and tomorrow.