“Third party maintenance” is really 4 decades old

Rimini Street just announced general availability for its support of SAP applications. And I get plenty of incredulous queries – how can they do that? Just like I have since I first talked in 2005 about Seth Ravin and his team supporting Oracle products.

But they are just continuing a fine industry tradition Gene Amdahl started when he left IBM in 1970 and developed “plug compatibles”.  Or Skype does while piggybacking on the  telco networks. Or compatible cartridges have done with HP printers.

They provide customers a choice.

And the big vendors play cat and mouse.  The Justice Department has just announced another review of IBM’s mainframe practices. Yes, 40 years after Gene! Justice will likely review claims of anti-competitive behavior being made by T3 Technologies and Neon Enterprise Software.  And likely the IBM lawsuit against, then settlement and acquisition of Platform Software last year – and then fairly rapid discontinuation of the acquired operations. 

The big vendors will conveniently talk about how important it is to protect their IP. How they will vigorously defend it etc. The reality is they are addicted to 90+% margins on software. $ 5,000 a gallon on printer ink. $ 3 a minute on international roaming.

And so long as they do, there will be Genes and Seths. Frankly, they represent a better scenario than one where the Feds and the EU come down hard and mandate tech moves to the auto models - where independent garages are allowed to service cars. History has shown these garages do a better and cheaper job than the car dealers. And auto manufacturers have to bundle years of covered warranty to allow their dealers to even have a shot at competing with those garages.