I have been doing video interviews with a number of CIOs, software executives and practitioners about acrobatics they have been seeing in various vertical sectors during the COVID-19 crisis and the "New normal" they can expect as the economy wakes up. Here is the index to the growing list of interviews.
This time it is Seth Ravin, Chairman and CEO of Rimini Street which provides third party support for enterprise software.
Seth is very widely traveled and when asked about acrobatics, he makes a striking observation on how Japanese business is going through a fairly dramatic digital transformation.
He sees customers seeking a fairly significant "cost realignment with their new revenue realities". He sees a focus on revenue-centric applications, and a de-emphasis of ERP "refreshes". He sees accelerating "lift and shift" moves of applications to cloud infrastructure as different from moving to SaaS. He also believes Rimini's virtual support model is timely in a world with travel restrictions. Broadly, he expects a gradual recovery spread over 2 to 3 years.
I liked his comments towards the end where he says he is respectful of those who build software. "We would not have anything to support if these great companies did not innovate." As he says "We are all trying to help the same customers. It's time for all of us to pitch in."
Sure would be nice if Oracle, SAP and other large enterprise vendors adopted a similar attitude and respected the customer need for choice in this tough economy.
While they talk more about their other innovations, not third party support, also check out my interviews with SAP, Unit4, Salesforce, Infor, Workday, VMWare and other executives in this series. I have invited Oracle, Microsoft and other vendor execs and hope they join this growing gallery.
