BUYER S GUIDE TO ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE SUPPORT

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1 BUYER S GUIDE TO ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE SUPPORT

2 About Rimini Street, Inc. Rimini Street is the leading independent provider of enterprise software support services. The company is redefining enterprise support services with an innovative, award-winning program that enables Oracle and SAP licensees to save up to 90 percent on total support costs over a decade, including saving 50 percent on their annual support fees. Clients can remain on their current software release without any required upgrades or migrations for at least 15 years after switching to Rimini Street. Hundreds of clients, including global, Fortune 500, midmarket, and public sector organizations from across a broad range of industries have selected Rimini Street as their trusted, independent support provider. To learn more, please visit or call within the USA or internationally Rimini Street and the Rimini Street logo are trademarks of Rimini Street, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Copyright All rights reserved. LT-US Rimini Street

3 Buyer s Guide to Enterprise Software Support Introduction It s imperative that you maintain and support your mission-critical enterprise applications on an ongoing basis. When things go wrong and threaten the continuity and viability of your business processes, you need responsive, expert support. You need to continuously ensure legal compliance with the latest tax and regulatory updates, and you need to ensure all components of your complex ERP environment continue to work together with seamless interoperability. Given annual maintenance fees are a huge budget line item for most IT organizations, when selecting the right support provider it is also critical to consider the costs associated with that decision. According to research by Gartner, approximately 80 percent of companies overall IT budgets are spent on keeping the lights on expenses. Only 20 percent is going to activities that grow and transform the business. 1 Your choice of support provider will have a major impact on your strategic budget allocations. Your selection of support provider will also affect your flexibility in crafting your strategic applications road map, and in formulating and managing your upgrade strategy now and in the years to come. Therefore, it s important to understand your options when choosing a support provider. Rimini Street 3

4 Support Options Today Offer a Choice 2 The primary maintenance and support options available to enterprise application software customers are vendor support and independent support. In rare cases, ERP customers may opt to self-support their non-mission-critical applications, and a few others might contract with traditional consulting firms for support; however, nearly all customers consider self-support and traditional consulting firm support too risky for their mission-critical applications. 3 This means the primary choices are effectively reduced to two: Vendor support Independent support Educating yourself fully about both support options can give you leverage in your pricing and SLA negotiations with any support provider. About This Buyer s Guide This Buyer s Guide is designed to help you compare the risks and rewards of vendor support vs. independent support. 1 Gartner s Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users, 2012 and Beyond: Control Slips Away, Gartner, November 23, In almost all cases Forrester has reviewed, clients have a choice. If you ve bought perpetual licenses, you can choose to take support from whomever you choose or even take no support. Mark Bartrick, The Emerging Third-Party Support Marketplace: Questions and Answers, Forrester Research, October 22, 2012, p See Support Strategies: Self-Support and Consulting Firm Support vs. Independent Support, a Rimini Street white paper, Among other problems, self-support and consulting firm support do not provide tax, legal and regulatory compliance updates, creating significant risk for your organization. 4 Rimini Street

5 Assessing Your Options The table on the following pages is designed to help you focus on the appropriate criteria to use when selecting a support provider. These are the typical criteria that most companies use when they are assessing whether to continue investing in vendor support or reduce their costs while choosing a premium independent option. For each criterion we present Rimini Street s capabilities. We leave the Software Vendor column blank so you can fill in the vendor s response when you re working through these elements of support in negotiation. When you re done filling in the blanks, you ll have a realistic buyer s view of what you ll be getting for your support investment with traditional software vendor support vs. what s offered by premium independent support from Rimini Street. Rimini Street 5

6 1. Support Delivery Model Criteria Rimini Street Service Level Agreements (SLAs) 24/7 support with guaranteed 30-minutes-or-less response. Average response time is less than 5 minutes. Expertise at Point of Contact Named, regional Primary Support Engineer (PSE) assigned to each client. When you call for help, you speak with your PSE never with an anonymous book-trained junior overseas call center staffer. Rimini Street hires only senior engineers with an average of 15+ years experience in their areas of specialty. With hundreds of clients over its history, there has never been a single issue that Rimini Street has been unable to resolve via a fix, configuration or other solution. High-Touch Service Model Over time, your Primary Support Engineer becomes intimately familiar with your ERP landscape. So when you call with an issue, you talk with someone who already knows your installation backwards and forwards so you can get right to the nitty-gritty. Account Management Rimini Street assigns an Account Manager to each client, charged with ensuring the client s complete satisfaction. When necessary, your Account Manager will immediately escalate your situation or issue, bringing it to the attention of senior management. 6 Rimini Street

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8 2. Support Program Features Criteria Rimini Street Tax, Legal and Regulatory Compliance Updates Rimini Street s tax, legal and regulatory team works directly with government organizations and thousands of additional sources to identify, analyze and deliver updates for 200 countries. All updates are tailored to your specific deployments and delivered ahead of the vendor s tax updates. Support for Customized Code Rimini Street supports all your customized code as part of your standard support contract, at no extra charge. You will never hear us ask you to replicate your issue in a vanilla environment. Support for Performance, Interoperability, Configuration and Operational Issues Rimini Street Support is a premium support program, offering help that goes well beyond simple break/fix capabilities. For example, the Rimini Street Technology Support Services helps clients virtualize their enterprise applications when interoperability conflicts arise with operating systems and browsers. Global Support Converge Rimini Street maintains offices in Pleasanton, Las Vegas, Hyderabad, London, Munich, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney and Singapore, with engineers distributed around the world. We support client operations in more than 70 countries and have dozens of clients with global operations. Rimini Street provides tax, legal and regulatory update capabilities for 200 countries. Length of Release Support The support window never closes at Rimini Street. We will support your application and help you through upgrades for five, ten years or more, based on your business requirements and strategic applications road map. 8 Rimini Street

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10 3. Cost Model and Strategic Considerations Criteria Rimini Street Pricing Annual support fees 50% less than vendor support. Adding in additional savings from no forced upgrades, support for customized code, and more efficient support processes, many Rimini Street clients realize savings approaching 90% on their total support costs. Upgrade Strategy Upgrade on your own timeline, when you are ready. Rimini Street will work with your team to obtain the necessary components from the vendor before your vendor maintenance ends. By doing this, we help you preserve your ability to upgrade in the future. While Rimini Street will not scope, manage and deliver the upgrade, we will provide upgrade process support as part of your support contract so you are well supported during and after your system upgrade. Strategic Flexibility Independent support helps keep your future strategic roadmap options open. How? Every upgrade or support package you deploy may further lock you into your software vendor s application and technology stack offerings. This may severely limit your flexibility down the road in choosing the next-generation system that best fits your needs. Innovation Enablement With Rimini Street you are free to seek innovation from your ERP vendor as well as other contemporary leading-edge options. Independent support can give you the time you need to you shop around for the next-generation solutions that s best for you. 10 Rimini Street

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12 4. Proven Track Record Criteria Rimini Street Industry Analysis Rimini Street is widely recognized by the analyst community as the leading provider of independent support for enterprise software. 4 Analysts have also extensively documented widespread ERP customer frustration with the quality and delivered value of vendor support. Customer References Rimini Street has many referenceable clients. Contact us for details. Customer Satisfaction On a scale of 1 5, Rimini Street s clients give it an average 4.83 customer satisfaction rating. 4 For example, Paul Hamerman: The leading provider for third-party maintenance services is Rimini Street, Application Upgrades: How to Make Upgrade Decisions When Business Value Proves Elusive, Forrester Research, June Rimini Street

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14 Additional Resources Analyst Reports To access these analyst reports, go here: Constellation Research: The Positive Pricing Impact Of Third Party Maintenance For Oracle and SAP Customers: Proof why CFOs, CIOs, and Procurement Officers Should Consider Third Party Maintenance In Contract Negotiations Strategy Constellation Research: Why Every CIO Should Consider Third Party Maintenance Forrester Research: Rimini Street Challenges Big Software Maintenance Fees Forrester Research: SAP s Maintenance Price Hike Should Concern Sourcing Professionals and Their CIOs Forrester Research: The Emerging Third-Party Software Support Marketplace: Questions And Answers Nucleus Research: Benefits From Third-Party Support: Rimini Street News Articles TEC: Rimini Street: Third-party ERP Support Is an Idea Whose Time Has Come, 09/17/2012 Cost savings lure Oracle customers to third-party application support, SearchOracle, 04/23/2012 Argyle Conversations: Seth Ravin, CEO, Rimini Street, 08/27/2012 Rimini Street Publications Datasheet: Are You a Fit for Independent Support? White Paper: Reducing SAP and Oracle Software Costs with Independent Support White Paper: Take Back Control of Your ERP Investment 14 Rimini Street

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16 Worldwide Headquarters 3993 Howard Hughes Parkway Suite 500 Las Vegas, Nevada USA Toll Free Main Fax