Top University Achieves Key Strategic Goals and Saves Jobs with Rimini Street Independent Support

LAS VEGAS - Wednesday, April 9th 2014 [ME NewsWire]

(BUSINESS WIRE)-- COLLABORATE 14 Conference – Rimini Street, Inc., the leading independent provider of enterprise software support for SAP AG’s (NYSE:SAP) Business Suite and BusinessObjects software and Oracle Corporation’s (NYSE:ORCL) Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, Hyperionand Oracle Retail software, today announced that Brandeis University, one of the premier universities in North America, has been able to fund several key initiatives, including implementing a long-needed centralized records management and piloting an IT governance initiative, by reallocating an estimated 800 thousand dollars in total annual maintenance cost savings from switching to Rimini Street independent support. In addition to the cost savings, Brandeis successfully avoided an expensive forced upgrade that the software vendor was requiring simply to retain full support of its PeopleSoft applications. Like Brandeis, public sector and commercial organizations around the world are using the substantial savings gained from a switch to Rimini Street independent support to preserve jobs and focus resources on critical organizational priorities, while benefitting from Rimini Street’s ultra-responsive support program that includes support for customizations, interoperability and performance tuning.

“Our switch to Rimini Street Support is netting Brandeis an estimated 800 thousand dollars in total annual savings, both freeing up significant financial and staff resources and allowing us to invest in the priority needs of the University,” said Brandeis’ Chief Information Officer, John Unsworth.

Brandeis Achieving Strategic Institutional Goals with Rimini Street

Established in 1948, Brandeis University is a top-ranked private North American research university in Waltham, Mass. In June 2012, Brandeis switched from Oracle support to Rimini Street support and in doing so, immediately cut its total annual maintenance costs by nearly 800 thousand dollars, which includes decreasing their annual maintenance fees by 50 percent compared to the software vendor’s annual fees. Brandeis also was able to redirect much-needed, expensive internal staff by avoiding costly, disruptive upgrades to its PeopleSoft applications that were required by the software vendor in order to continue to receive full support for the University’s PeopleSoft applications.

The University is redeploying its savings from its switch to Rimini Street Support to fund a central records management project as part of its larger campus-wide risk mitigation goals. Furthermore, Brandeis was able to avoid reductions in its IT workforce, and instead redeployed the freed up resources to focus on priority projects such as customizing its existing PeopleSoft systems to better suit the University’s needs, and addressing functions with high ROI such as workflow, reporting, security, faculty activity reports and research administration.

Added Unsworth, “Rimini Street is helping us make what we have, do what we want. Before, Oracle set the calendar for upgrades, which in turn determined how a number of Library & Technology Services employees, and others on campus, spent substantial amounts of their time and limited budget. Today, the PeopleSoft experts that we have at Brandeis are investing their valuable talents and time into higher ROI projects that achieve some efficiency or address some long-standing requirement for the campus, rather than spending that time and talent implementing, testing and rolling out upgrades that have low ROI for the University.”

Unsworth also offered the following insight to CIOs considering moving from vendor to independent support: “If you, as CIO, make the choice I made — to switch to Rimini Street independent support — you have to be ready to consider that it will present your IT staff who have PeopleSoft expertise an opportunity to upskilll to administrative computing experts instead of simply PeopleSoft experts. One is a long-term investment and the other is just a transferrable skill.” Like Unsworth’s team and IT departments across other organizations, the move to Rimini Street independent support can provide the opportunity for new and valuable skill sets by freeing up limited resources for projects that can help transform, provide innovation or better meet the needs of the organization.

Brandeis Benefiting from Rimini Street’s Premium-Level Support Model

More than 500 organizations around the world currently rely upon independent support with Rimini Street and have cut annual software support fees by 50 percent. Like Brandeis, many organizations also leverage Rimini Street’s premium-level service model to help drive additional significant reductions in related support and maintenance costs. These include support for customizations, interoperability, performance and interfaces at no additional fee, as well as an assigned 24x7x365 Primary Support Engineer (PSE) that eliminates the need for extra maintenance resources and headcount associated with inefficient, burdensome vendor support processes and policies.

“Since 2005, Rimini Street clients around the world have benefited from one of the most robust and innovative support programs in the industry, and have used their substantial savings to improve their bottom line results and fund strategic business initiatives,” said Seth Ravin, CEO, Rimini Street. “We are proud that Brandeis chose Rimini Street as its trusted software support partner, and look forward to continuing to help the University achieve its long-term strategic goals.”

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 www.riministreet.com or call within the USA 888-870-9692 or internationally +1 702-839-9671.

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 © 2014. All rights reserved.

Contacts
Rimini Street, Inc.
Alma Park, +1 323-229-7282
apark@riministreet.com

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