white paper why siebel customers choose third-party support...siebel 7: first web-based siebel...

White Paper

Why Siebel Customers Choose Third-Party Support

http://www.riministreet.com

Rimini Street | Why Siebel Customers Choose Third-Party Support2

White Paper

About Rimini Street, Inc.

Rimini Street is a global provider of enterprise software products and services and the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP products. The company has redefined enterprise support services since 2005 with an innovative, award-winning program that enables licensees of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and other enterprise software vendors to save up to 90 percent on total maintenance costs. Clients can remain on their current software release without any required upgrades for a minimum of 15 years. Global Fortune 500, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries rely on Rimini Street as their trusted, third-party support provider.

Rimini Street | Why Siebel Customers Choose Third-Party Support 3

Table of Contents

Executive Summary .......................................................................................................................4

The Current State of Siebel Applications ................................................................................5

Overview .................................................................................................................................................................5

Early Siebel Application Release Cycles Were Short — And Necessary ..................................5

Siebel 7: First Web-Based Siebel Version and Rebranding ...........................................................6

Siebel 8: Oracle Acquisition and Lifetime Support Policy .............................................................6

What, Exactly, Is Oracle’s Commitment to Siebel CRM? .................................................................. 7

The Future: Fusion Applications ................................................................................................................. 7

Options for Your Strategic Road Map.......................................................................................................8

Siebel Customers Have Strategic Decisions to Make .......................................................................9

Analysis by Siebel Release ........................................................................................................................ 10

Upgrading Does Not Deliver Business Value to Justify the Cost ............................................. 10

Siebel 7.x Customers ...................................................................................................................................... 10

Siebel 8.x Customers ..................................................................................................................................... 11

The Software Vendor Support Model Is Expensive and Outdated .................................12

Closing of Support Window Is #1 Motivator for Upgrading —

Not ROI or New Functionality.....................................................................................................................12

Fairness and Relevance of Vendor Support Model Questioned ..............................................12

Software Vendor Support Doesn’t Address Majority of Issues .................................................13

Is Oracle Support Putting Your Business at Risk? ...........................................................................13

Next Steps: You Have a Choice of Annual Support Providers ..........................................14

Your Siebel Release Strategy Options with Oracle ..........................................................................14

A Better Option: Siebel Licensees Realize Value with Rimini Street ......................................16

Recommendations for Siebel Licensees .............................................................................................. 17


White Paper

Executive Summary

Your Siebel software is mature and stable and more than supports your CRM business requirements. But a significant pain point for many Siebel customers is the total cost of ownership of their software — including the high cost of operating, maintaining and upgrading their applications.

In addition to the high total cost of maintenance, Siebel licensees must assess and address several important issues related to their Siebel applications, including the uncertainty of future Siebel product roadmaps, a “forced march” to Fusion applications, and upcoming changes in support windows for Siebel releases. The urgency is growing for Siebel licensees to make critical decisions for their Siebel strategy:

― To upgrade or not to upgrade?

― To stay with current Siebel releases?

― To move towards new Fusion applications as they become available?

― To explore other next-generation CRM platforms?

― To remain on expensive vendor support that delivers questionable value but more than 90 percent margins to the software vendor?

This white paper surveys the state of Siebel applications today, analyzes the strategic road map ahead for customers using Siebel under Oracle® annual support, and concludes with actionable recommendations for Siebel licensees. Major points:

― Today’s Siebel releases can run your business operations for the next decade and beyond.

― There is limited ROI in upgrading today’s feature-rich Siebel software releases.

― You can save millions of dollars by leveraging third-party support to avoid expensive upgrades and reduce maintenance fees and related costs.

― Third-party support helps you reduce risk and avoid lock-in — keeping your options open for future next-generation systems.

Third-party support from Rimini Street replaces Oracle annual support for your Siebel system, enabling you to save 50 percent on annual support fees and up to 90 percent on your total cost of maintenance, including the avoidance of expensive “forced” upgrades and support for customized code.

Siebel licensees are choosing third-party support from Rimini Street for substantial cost savings, guaranteed ultra-responsive support, premium features, and reduced risk — and because today, hundreds of world-class organizations have already validated that third-party support is a proven option.


The Current State of Siebel Applications

Overview

Founded by Tom Siebel in 1993, Siebel Systems was the market leader in sales force automation as well as the broader category of customer relationship management (CRM) software by the late 1990s. Siebel brought business acumen, CRM best practices and technology together into a packaged solution — with a price tag to match.

The leading “front-office application” on the market, Siebel CRM integrated with back-office financial and distribution applications and shared its information with service delivery functionality in the call center. Siebel CRM automated the entire end-to-end sales cycle from campaign marketing to lead generation to closing opportunities. Adopters of the new CRM applications benefitted from functionality that included “baked-in” knowledge for many industries.

Back when IT departments had sufficient budget to license Siebel’s expensive best-of-breed CRM applications, Siebel dominated the market. The diverse product offering across Siebel 6 (released in 2000) established Siebel Systems as the CRM market leader, and most Siebel 6 customers were lured to the commitment to Siebel 7 (2001) — some early, and many by the time 7.5 was released (2002).

Early Siebel Application Release Cycles Were Short — And Necessary

Beginning around 1995, Siebel’s early application releases made their mark in sales automation, call center, and field service functionality, and saw widespread adoption in the large enterprise space with Fortune 500 companies.

Having released Siebel 2.0 in 1995 and 3.0 in 1997, Siebel chose to brand Siebel 4.0 as Siebel 98 and Siebel 5.0 as Siebel 99. This branding-by-year was indicative of the aggressive annual release cycles which were common among enterprise software vendors at the time: these closely timed release cycles were bringing enormously valuable new functionality into mainstream releases as the system matured, fleshing out and completing complex business processes.

With Siebel 2000 (Release 6), customers achieved ROI from a diverse product offering that was targeted across horizontal and vertical markets, with expansion into mid-market segments. Siebel’s customers benefitted from all the new functionality — as long as they could keep up with the releases and stay within the supported technology frameworks (largely Oracle and Microsoft platforms). And that was fine, because those vendors were also the market leaders in the space, together enjoying a combined 90 percent market share.


White Paper

Siebel 7: First Web-Based Siebel Version and Rebranding

Siebel proved unable to release its major new Internet-architected version by calendar year 2001, and the resulting 2002 release was branded Siebel 7.0. The technology shift from client/server to browser-based “no code on the client” was a challenge for Siebel, and the installed customer base found the upgrade to Siebel 7 to be a very costly endeavor — both in terms of budget and project timelines.

Nevertheless, the customer base largely adopted Siebel 7, and today many customers remain on Siebel 7.x releases. The potent combination of comprehensive CRM functionality with web browsers — as well as the mobile devices which have become an increasingly indispensable component of the field sales process since the year 2000 — represented a winning solution that is still delivering real value to customers today.

Siebel 8: Oracle Acquisition and Lifetime Support Policy

Oracle subsequently acquired Siebel in 2006, inheriting the pre-GA Siebel 8 code line. Siebel 8.0, released by Oracle in 2007, is a robust, complete, stable product that, to this day, represents the benchmark of CRM functionality.

As with its other acquired product lines, Oracle increased annual Siebel maintenance fees to 22 percent across the board and brought the Siebel product line under its Lifetime Support Policy, which sets consistent support policies, prices and timelines for most Oracle products. Oracle’s Lifetime Support Policy has three phases:

― Premier Support — Oracle’s “standard” support, typically lasting for five years from general availability (GA) at a cost of 22 percent of your license fee, often with annual increases with each renewal.

― Extended Support — Increased pricing of an additional 10 percent in Year 1, plus an additional 20 percent in Year 2 and an additional 30 percent in Year 3; limited bug fixes, with less commitment to interoperability updates and third-party platform certifications, lasting for three years following the end of Premier Support — cost: Extended Support is not always offered.

― Sustaining Support — No new fixes and updates, disengagement from vendor’s development organization, lasting indefinitely — cost is to be determined in consultation with Oracle and is dependent upon scope of services. Sustaining Support is not always offered.

Oracle positioned Siebel 8 — particularly Siebel 8.1, as the release that would form a bridge between Siebel’s market-leading CRM and Oracle’s planned Fusion Applications, and in the five years that have elapsed since Siebel 8’s release, the Siebel application has been further tied to Oracle’s Fusion road map through middleware and supplemental technology components.


Yet today, five years after the release of Siebel 8, Fusion is still arguably more strategy than product, and Oracle’s Lifetime Support Policy serves to keep existing clients on Oracle’s maintenance stream, with added releases that bring limited enhancements and functionality — but no significant advances aside from those specifically designed by Oracle to advance its Fusion strategy.

What, Exactly, Is Oracle’s Commitment to Siebel CRM?

Industry analysts believe Oracle is reducing its commitment to Siebel as the vendor has shifted the majority of its resources towards Fusion applications development.

Oracle has shown a Siebel CRM roadmap, which extends beyond the year 2020, but the scope only contains Patch Releases and annual Innovation Packs which largely contain enhancements to earlier releases or further introduce components, such as middleware and analytics that will be required for Fusion applications.

The Future: Fusion Applications

Fusion is Oracle’s next-generation suite of business applications. Oracle has been making announcements about Fusion and its progress ever since it acquired PeopleSoft in 2005, and Oracle’s ever-shifting timelines have been a source of frustration, making it difficult for Siebel customers to make concrete plans and choices. The reality is that it could be 3–8 years, or even more, before the full Fusion suite is “complete.”

It has become clear that although Fusion covers some, but not all of the main CRM product areas, there are some major points to think about when considering the implications of deploying Fusion within your organization:

1. Purchase of Fusion licenses and support agreements — Oracle has not indicated that customers’ existing Siebel product licenses can be directly transferred over to Fusion applications without cost. Oracle, instead, is positioning Fusion as a completely new product line which should lead customers towards the expectation of having to purchase new licenses and support contracts.

2. Early versions of Fusion are not complete — Oracle has delivered early versions of Fusion, with functional gaps, which still lag behind the most current versions of Siebel CRM. Consider that many other Fusion applications, middleware and even integrations with Oracle’s latest acquisitions are all being developed in parallel and you have a scenario which raises multiple business and technical risks for customers.

3. The Marketplace isn’t convinced that Fusion is right for them — Although Oracle has delivered early versions of its Fusion Applications the marketplace has been hesitant to adopt the solutions at anywhere near scale. Many customers are taking a “wait and see” approach on Fusion in order to gauge the solution’s roadmap and future direction before committing considerable time, money and resources to replace their existing Siebel CRM system.

4. Deployment — Fusion will essentially be a full reimplementation.Everything changes with Fusion: everything is being rewritten with new technology stack, data models, process flows, and so on. Analysts caution that you will need to budget for an entirely new CRM implementation when it’s ready.

— ZDNet“Oracle’s customers a bit baffled by Fusion strategy, says report” February 11, 2013

“A 2012 survey, conducted by Forrester Research, revealed that 65% of Oracle customers indicated that they had no plans to upgrade to Fusion”


Options for Your Strategic Road Map

Oracle has been outlining a set of “co-existence” options for IT leaders looking at Fusion and planning their enterprise application road maps1. Translation:

In our opinion, Oracle is defining a plan to move you to Fusion. We summarize your options with Oracle here, and introduce an additional option: Rimini Street Support. At the end of this white paper we will return to this table with further analysis and commentary:

Siebel Customers Have Strategic Decisions to Make

Going forward, you need to decide: To upgrade or not to upgrade? To stay with Siebel, move towards Fusion, or explore other next-generation CRM platforms? To remain

Option Description Implication

Move forward

Upgrade to the latest release of your Siebel product. This keeps you in the Premier Support window.

Limit customizations and non-standard product configurations and integrations with 3rd party products.

Keep paying maintenance to Oracle

Potential vendor lock-in to Fusion

No support for customizations

Move away

Begin 3-5 year transition plan for migration to another CRM solution (Cloud / SaaS) and retire Siebel

Stay on current Siebel release in interim while making no new changes

Convert to cloud solution and reduce Siebel-related costs

1 Aan Joch, “Oracle Fusion Applications: Changing the Game,” http://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/fusion/fusion-changing-the-game-185230.pdf, accessed November 17, 2011.


on expensive vendor support that delivers questionable value, or to keep strategic options open and accrue funds incrementally towards innovative IT initiatives with savings from third-party support?

The remainder of this white paper is designed to give you information you need to help you make the best decisions for your business and derive the maximum possible value from the enormous investment you have already made in your Siebel system. Let’s look at possible strategic road maps for customers running specific Siebel 7.x–8.x releases.

Option Description Implication

Restart

Evaluate all available CRM solutions in the market

Stay on current Siebel release in interim while making no new changes

Flexibility to choose future CRM solution that meets business needs

Reduce Siebel-related costs until a new strategy is agreed-upon

Innovate

Integrate 3rd party products and services to extend existing Siebel CRM platform

Meet future business requirements by augmenting stable and mature Siebel CRM

Fund innovation projects with maintenance savings

Stand pat

Remain on current Siebel platform with no intention of upgrading.

Optional to extensively customize or not at all

Oracle may or may not provide support for your version of Siebel

Oracle will not support any customizations or non-standard product configurations

Third-party software support

With Third-party software support you can slash maintenance costs by 50%, receive support for customizations, fund and enable Innovation Around the Edges projects and maintain the flexibility to upgrade on your timeframe.


Analysis by Siebel Release

Upgrading May Not Deliver Business Value to Justify the Cost2

Siebel 7.x Customers

Siebel licensees running 7.5–7.8 releases have found stability and maturity in those releases, but many have felt constant pressure from Oracle to upgrade. Most licensees have had to struggle to justify the upgrade cost, or are looking at a very specific benefit from the Siebel 8 release to justify the expense and business disruption of making the leap.

If you are on Siebel 7.x, you were likely one of the earlier movers to this release. By now you’ve probably been shuffled up to 7.8 through a number of “highly recommended” upgrades to get to a stable version. By now, you have a very good understanding of the maturity, stability and comprehensive functionality of your implementation, and it continues to perform beautifully as designed.

Key points for Siebel 7.x licensees:

― Premier Support has ended.

― You may be paying more under Extended Support and getting little value in return:

― No patches

― No added functionality

― Reduced expertise

― The ROI of upgrading to 8.x is hard to calculate:

― Costly, time-consuming, resource-consuming effort to upgrade

― Real measurable business value may not justify the cost and effort

CRM Premier End Date Extended End Date Sustaining6.0.x Jun 2005 Dec 2007 Indefinite7.0.x Dec 2008 N/A N/A

7.5.3 Dec 2008 Dec 2010 None

7.7.x Sept 2009 Sept 2012 Indefinite

7.8.x May 2010 May 2013 Indefinite

8.0.x Jan 2012 Jan 2015 Indefinite

8.1.x Nov 2016 Nov 2019 Indefinite

8.2.x Nov 2016 Nov 2019 Indefinite

2 All release and support dates in this white paper are based on Oracle Corporation, “Oracle Information-Driven Support: Oracle Lifetime Support Policy, Oracle Applications,” February, 2012.


Siebel 8.x Customers

Siebel 8 has been widely adopted, particularly by customers that viewed 8.0/8.1 as the terminal release before Fusion Applications. Encouraged by optimistic forward-looking statements by Oracle, many customers believed they would be seeing more of Fusion by now; instead, they are seeing extensions of Siebel support timelines as they continue to pay expensive maintenance fees for limited incremental releases, and Fusion continues to be delayed.

Siebel 8.1 users have seen Oracle extend Premier Support for 8.1 through 2016 (from 2013). While on the face of it this may appear to be beneficial to customers running 8.1, customers are raising the following questions and concerns:

― Does the extension of Premier Support for Siebel 8.1 mean that Fusion CRM applications are not yet ready to replace Siebel CRM — and will not be ready until 2016 or later?

― With no clear timeline for delivery of comprehensive CRM functionality through Fusion, how can I plan a meaningful roadmap to Fusion?

― The vendor wants my maintenance fees from now until at least 2016 to fund the creation of a new platform (Fusion) — but what guarantee do have that I will want to migrate to that new platform once it’s available in general delivery?

Siebel 8.2 doesn’t offer much more than 8.1. And the CRM space is already seeing dynamic competition from cloud vendors like Salesforce.com — giving Siebel licensees more options as they plan their future CRM strategy.

Key points and questions for Siebel 8.x licensees:

― Siebel 8.0 is nearing the end of Extended Support (January 2015).

― Is it worth paying for Sustaining Support, only to see a reduced Oracle commitment to Siebel 8.0?

― An upgrade to Siebel 8.1 is still expensive. Is the upgrade being driven solely by your desire to remain under vendor support?

― If you’re stable on 8.0, do you see enough value in upgrading to 8.1? Or can you justify paying the premium for Extended Support, and getting little value?

Let’s step back from specific releases to consider how the current software vendor support model may be putting organizations running any Siebel release at risk.


The Software Vendor Support Model Is Expensive and Outdated

Closing of Support Window Is #1 Motivator for Upgrading — Not ROI or New Functionality

Organizations upgrade their Siebel software for various reasons including perceived ROI, new business functionality, a desire to move to SOA or some other new technology, and a desire to stay on the Oracle-approved path to Fusion applications. But these are all secondary reasons. What’s the main reason? According to analysts and customer surveys, the number-one reason for considering an upgrade is facing the end of support windows.3

To appreciate the absurdity of this situation, imagine you have bought a new car that is now three years old. The automobile dealer’s warranty runs out (“the support window closes”) after three years, and the dealer informs you that you are now required to upgrade to a new car. In the real world, of course, you have the freedom to take your car to your local third-party mechanic and receive more value for your dollar as well as more personalized service; third-party enterprise software support can provide a similar value to Siebel licensees approaching their Maintenance End Date (MED).

Fairness and Relevance of Vendor Support Model Questioned

The big software vendors have enjoyed a virtual monopoly on support services for their products, and with today’s 90 percent profit margins for the vendor on its support operations, for every ten support dollars you pay the vendor, the vendor spends only one dollar on actual support. Customers are coming to the conclusion that the vendor support model is at best dated — and at worst obsolete and grossly unfair to the enterprise software licensee.

And industry analysts agree: you may be spending too much on enterprise software annual support and receiving limited value. Ongoing maintenance and operational costs typically consume two-thirds of IT budgets, which constrains IT effectiveness and limits innovation.

“We believe ERP software has matured as a product thus delaying the necessity for upgrades and mitigating the need to pay for upgrade rights.”

— Peter Goldmacher, Cowen & Company, “Maintenance Revenue: High Margin or High Risk?,” September 2009

3 Dennis Howlett, “73% Oracle customers upgrade to stay supported, no reported ROI,” ZDNet, March 9, 2012, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/howlett/73-oracle-customers-upgrade-to-stay- supported-no-reported-roi/3955, accessed March 15, 2012.


Software Vendor Support Doesn’t Address Majority of Issues

Yet despite the high cost and outrageous vendor profit margins, the software vendor support model doesn’t address the most important issues impacting your mature Siebel software. For example, standard vendor support programs do not support customized code; however, 65 percent of all issues submitted to Rimini Street relate to code modified by the customer. In addition to the risk of not receiving support for the bulk of their issues, Siebel licensees are confronted with “forced” upgrades with limited value just to retain support or to avoid increased maintenance fees.

Is Oracle Support Putting Your Business at Risk?

After decades of maturation, the industry is now re-assessing the value and fairness of an irrelevant vendor support model that may be putting your business at risk. Consider the real, major financial and business risks you run when you remain with today’s outdated vendor support programs:

Risk: Vendor Lock-In Limits Flexibility

Every upgrade you deploy may further lock you into Oracle’s application and technology stack offering. Every upgrade adds technology stack components to your infrastructure, and can commit you further to the vendor’s future systems through the adoption of proprietary technology from the vendor. This severely limits your flexibility down the road in choosing the next-generation system that best fits your needs. In effect, whether you know it or not, you are picking a winner before the race even starts.

Risk: New Platform Development Is Uncertain

Oracle’s suggested upgrade/coexistence path forces expensive upgrades and maintenance fees until you deploy Fusion. But remember there is a significant risk in early adoption or commitment to unproven new platforms: not all CRM vendor development, especially on new platforms, is a success.

By our estimates Oracle has spent over $5.6 billion dollars in CRM-related acquisitions since acquiring Siebel in 2006. All of these acquisitions are to be integrated and leveraged by Oracle’s Fusion platform. It has been over 7 years since Oracle first announced Fusion and yet no product has been shipped that can completely replace Siebel CRM.

Organizations that commit to unproven new platforms, through early adoption, are incurring significant risk.

— R. “Ray” WangSoftwareInsider, October 4, 2010

Innovation Is Coming from Smaller, More Agile Firms

“Despite hundreds of billions wasted on failed research and development projects, most market influencers would agree that enterprise software vendors have produced a dearth of innovation over the past decade … Innovations came from the consumer tech side and next-generation solution providers.”


Risk: “Forced” Expensive Upgrades Limit Innovation

Oracle’s suggested path of upgrades and coexistence with Fusion forces expensive upgrades and maintenance fees until you eventually deploy your next-generation system.

ROI comes from real business value, not perceived benefit. As the system owner, you can take control back from the vendor by exploring your support choices and aligning your business to answer the question: What is our future roadmap for our Siebel implementation?

Next Steps: You Have a Choice of Annual Support Providers

Your Siebel Release Strategy Options with Oracle

Oracle wants you to migrate off of Siebel and onto Fusion. Although this is not an overnight change, Oracle wants to solidify their presence in your IT shop and lock you in with more Fusion products and Oracle technology.


Oracle Options for You Analysis

Minimize Changes

Pay full support pricing but get less support over time just to run your current stable releases for an extended timeframe. Not upgrading to the latest Siebel release may introduce extra cost for you in paying for Extended Support. If your release moves to Sustaining Support, you are at risk if you encounter new issues, as the vendor does not address new issues at this level of support.

Stay Current

If you do follow Oracle’s plan for you and upgrade, this keeps you in the Premier Support window; but you are on a constant upgrade treadmill, and the provable business value of Siebel upgrades may get smaller and smaller for many licensees.Whether you upgrade or not, remaining on vendor support is an extremely high-cost option for you, while giving 90 percent margins for Oracle. Why keep paying expensive maintenance fees on an aging platform and funding a future platform you may never use or want?

Embrace Fusion

“Coexistence” with Fusion — adding Fusion applications to your mix as they become available — may involve high cost and risk. New architecture and platform = unknown and unproven.If you decide to “coexist,” you are essentially deciding to pay to migrate to Fusion before you have had a chance to assess the completed suite. And you still need to worry about the support timelines for any Siebel applications you still run. Oracle’s suggested “coexistence” strategy may be a risky, expensive path to vendor lock-in.


A Better Option: Siebel Licensees Realize Value with Rimini Street

Hundreds of world-class organizations are saying “No” to Oracle’s plans to migrate them to Fusion, and are exercising their right to select the annual support provider that best fits their needs and budget.

― Third-party support from Rimini Street replaces your annual support program from the software vendor. Rimini Street provides all your needed bug fixes so you can continue to cost-effectively run your Siebel applications for the next decade or longer with no required upgrades. Siebel customers choose third-party support from Rimini Street for:

― Substantial cost savings: guaranteed savings of 50 percent over vendor annual support fees

― Premium, relevant, cutting-edge service model: guaranteed ultra-responsive support and premium features — such as support for customizations, interoperability and performance tuning — all at no additional cost

― Upgrade flexibility: Rimini Street can help you avoid costly upgrades, extend the life of your current, stable Siebel release, and reduce risk as you position yourself for the next proven technology platform

― Customization support: Rimini Street supports all your customizations and non-standard product configurations from day one.

Many organizations utilize third-party support as a key aspect of their application strategy, using the savings from third-party support to address real business problems around their Siebel systems while evaluating new application platforms at their own measured, deliberate pace — not according to the vendor’s release timeline and agenda.

If you, on the other hand, choose to move down the path of total commitment to the vendor now, you may be putting your future business options at risk. If you simply accept the vendor’s road map for your IT future, you may incur substantial additional costs and lose most of your strategic flexibility, because you will be inextricably enmeshed in the vendor’s technology stack, applications and support programs for the foreseeable future.

“Our decision to go with Rimini Street for our support needs was simple. They offered us a level of care at or above what we were currently seeing with Siebel and Oracle at a fraction of the price.”

— Jesse Mitchell, Wenger Manufacturing


Recommendations for Siebel Licensees

Oracle wants you to migrate off of Siebel and onto Fusion. Although this is not an overnight change, Oracle wants to solidify their presence in your IT shop and lock you in with more Fusion products and Oracle technology.

― Move to third-party support — Wait until Fusion is better defined and generally available, defer upgrades for now, save your maintenance fees and upgrade costs, and run your Siebel apps with third-party support from Rimini Street.

― Maximize the value of current releases — Extend the longevity of your established Siebel application and don’t do an upgrade that has zero business value.

― Avoid “forced” upgrades due to vendor support timelines — But know that you can upgrade to Siebel 8.1/8.2 under Rimini Street Support if you wish.

― Use your savings from third-party support to address real business problems around your Siebel system such as ongoing innovation and ever-changing business requirements.

― Do a thorough ROI study of Fusion when Fusion is available, compare Fusion to other available solutions, and select the best next-generation system for your business once they have been fully built, deployed and tested.

— Peter GoldmacherCowen & Company, “Industry Outlook: What If the HP Board Isn’t Incompe-tent?,” October 19, 2010

“Customers can save millions of dollars if they have a viable third-party alternative to applications support and can postpone the move to Fusion. This is a huge opportunity for Rimini Street and massive problem for Oracle.”

— Vinnie MirchandaniDeal Architect, September 26, 2010

“The packaged software maintenance model is broken. Don’t reward software vendors for it by staying on their upgrade treadmill at their arbitrary 18 or 22 percent a year of software ‘license value.’ … ”

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© 2019 Rimini Street, Inc. All rights reserved. “Rimini Street” is a registered trademark of Rimini Street, Inc. in the United States and other countries, and Rimini Street, the Rimini Street logo, and combinations thereof, and other marks marked by TM are trademarks of Rimini Street, Inc. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners, and unless otherwise specified, Rimini Street claims no affiliation, endorsement, or association with any such trademark holder or other companies referenced herein. This document was created by Rimini Street, Inc. (“Rimini Street”) and is not sponsored by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Oracle Corporation, SAP SE or any other party. Except as otherwise expressly provided in writing, Rimini Street assumes no liability whatsoever and disclaims any express, implied or statutory warranty relating to the information presented, including, without limitation, any implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Rimini Street shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, punitive, special, or incidental damages arising out of the use or inability to use the information. Rimini Street makes no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the information provided by third parties and reserves the right to make changes to the information, services or products, at any time. LT-US-041919

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