SAP's "New" TomorrowNow Issue

SAP is battling Oracle in court over its TomorrowNow subsidiary.

But as it kicks off Sapphire in Orlando this morning, it is also facing its own version of "TomorrowNow". Rimini Street, which has offered such services around several Oracle applications, is announcing third party maintenance around SAP products.

While many software vendors consider third party maintenance a threat to their manhood, it is really about customer choice. SAP, in particular, will have a tough time saying third party maintenance is not right for its customers when it has been offering it to Oracle customers. In the past it has dodged the question why it does not offer its own customers a basic maintenance option.

Rimini's offerings should be of interest to "end-of-life" and budget-constrained customers - those that do not want to migrate to ECC 6.0, or those that just cannot justify SAP maintenance at full rates.

As I have written before on many occasions, just because you bought a Porsche, does not mean you have to go to the company dealers for all services.

Comments

[vlieffroy]

this offer should interest SAP customers for sure. Especially now that SAP maintenance fees are as high as Oracle's ones (22% for new customers).

[Steve Mann]

...he says, as Rimini Street ads appear on your blog :)

[vinnie mirchandani]

Steve missed you at Sapphire

Rimini is one of several sponsors of the blog starting 2 months ago. But that's not why my post appeared . I have been writing about third party maintenance and players like Rimini since this blog started 3 years ago.

Rimini briefed me last week about their plans to offer SAP related services under embargo till Monday morning (as SAP and other vendors do around their own releases) I would have carried it whether on not they were a sponsor.

You can read about my conflict of interest/sponsor guidelines in the link above