After plenty of name calling at the trial in Las Vegas, both Oracle and Rimini Street sent a few of us reasonable sounding emails about the jury’s verdict awarding Oracle $ 50 million in damages. Oracle had asked for close to $ 250 million, Rimini had hoped it would be less than $ 10 million.
Oracle
“This decision against Rimini Street and Seth Ravin reinforces long established rules of fairness and honesty in business and the principles protecting investments in innovation. Oracle is committed to delivering outstanding support services for our products to enable our customers' success and we look forward to the next stage of our legal proceedings with Rimini Street.”
Rimini Street
“We were pleased to finally get our day in court. As Oracle and Rimini Street agree, there is no dispute that third party support for enterprise software is permitted for Oracle licensees to purchase and for Rimini Street to offer. This case was about a good-faith license dispute regarding processes no longer in use. The global Rimini Street team remains focused on providing excellent service to our clients, innovating the enterprise support industry and expanding our worldwide service capabilities."
Oracle is probably disappointed with the lower amount in the judgment, Rimini unhappy but I think it is time to move on
a) Oracle has made significant strides as a cloud player with the broadest set of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and DaaS offerings in the industry. I realize the wheels of justice move slowly and this trial has been years in the making, but the day I attended court it was jarring to hear Oracle attorneys talk about contract terms and IT practices from two decades ago. Oracle marketing should be associated with today’s language of multi-tenancy, availability zones and global delivery. The longer this dispute continues, the more it associates Oracle with its on-premise past
b) In profiling Rimini customers in SAP Nation, I was struck by how many choose to move to third party maintenance not just for the economics, but for support of customized applications and for much more personalized support (not having to go through the tedious ticketing process at most vendors). The maintenance product has been ripe for redefinition for a while now – Oracle has an opportunity to replace traditional module-based maintenance with similar customized (and broader if it can include support for all the acquisitions it has made) offerings.
Larry Dignan believes the verdict will be appealed. He is likely correct – I just think it is time to move on.
