Rimini Street, Inc., a global provider of end-to-end enterprise software support, products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software, and a Salesforce and AWS partner, advised licensees running pre-19c releases of Oracle Database who no longer receive Oracle Premier Support, that they can continue using their current Oracle Database release for up to an additional 15 years without required upgrades by switching to premium Rimini Support™.Clients can also save 50% on support fees compared to Oracle Support and leverage Rimini Protect™ security solutions to significantly enhance their security posture around their entire Oracle Database landscape.
Rimini Street Extends Oracle Database Release Lifespan at Half the Support Cost
Oracle has downgraded all Oracle Database releases earlier than 19c to Sustaining Support status, which offers a much more limited scope of support that even Oracle senior executives admit is not sufficient for production operation – but demand clients pay the same retail price as for full Oracle Premier Support.
Oracle’s apparent strategy is to try and pressure Oracle Database licensees to upgrade to the latest Oracle Database releases that qualify for Oracle Premier Support – a proposal which would likely require licensees to incur significant cost and allocate many IT resources, may disrupt the business, and – for many organizations – offer no clear ROI.
At the present time, Oracle only provides Premier Support for the two latest Oracle Database releases – 19c and 21c. However, Oracle Premier Support for both 19c and 21c releases is currently scheduled to end in less than a year, April 2024.
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Oracle Database Licensees Get Better ROI with Rimini Street
Rimini Street continues to add an impressive list of globally recognized Oracle Database clients, many of whom are the dominant leaders in their respective industries and operating some of the largest Oracle Database landscapes in the world.
With greater demand by board members, shareholders and investors for companies to achieve both growth and profitability, IT and finance leaders are taking a harder look at the ROI of their IT investments and future IT roadmaps. Support for Oracle Database, a platform that is largely considered both mission-critical to the business and a stable application, is an area of opportunity for significant cost savings, better service and innovative, additional security.
Rimini Street clients who rely on their Oracle Databases to store their critical data and run their business are enjoying the service benefits of Rimini Support and Rimini Protect for Oracle Database, including deep Oracle Database engineering expertise, guaranteed 10-minute response time for priority cases 24/7/365, patchless and nearly instant security protection against evolving security threats and other service benefits not included in Oracle’s standard support packages.
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Rimini Street Provides Better Value and Expert Service
As a company that specializes in providing unmatched support value and quality for Oracle and SAP software since 2005, Rimini Support allows companies to extract maximum value from their existing Oracle Database version for at least 15 additional years without any required upgrades, enjoy a hyper-responsive service experience with deep Oracle Database engineering capability, achieve immediate savings of 50% compared to Oracle Annual Maintenance fees and free up capital for innovation and strategic initiatives.
“Clients who choose Rimini Support for Oracle Database experience a true partnership and achieve many more of their strategic goals,” said Frank Reneke, group vice president and global pre-sales at Rimini Street. “With dedicated Primary Support Engineers (PSEs) bringing an average of 20 years of experience assigned to each of our clients, backed up by a global team of hundreds of highly knowledgeable and skilled database engineers, our Oracle Database support is not only premium in responsiveness and quality, but also in the breadth of services that we can provide to optimize, evolve and transform our clients’ IT landscape. We enable our clients to re-focus their IT talents’ time and budget on projects that will help them reduce cost, increase profits, improve competitiveness and grow their business.”
Rimini Protect for Oracle Database Provides Unique, Innovative Protection
In a March 2023 Spotlight Research Report by International Data Corporation (IDC), analysts shared their concerns about database security vulnerabilities created by software updates incompatible with custom code in applications running on top of the database, citing, “Often custom code will create additional challenges to the database update process because the custom code is not updated when any maintenance update from the database manufacturer is implemented. One possible scenario is that when a database owner updates their database with the latest update provided by the database manufacturer, the updated code from the manufacturer will effectively break the custom code that worked with the earlier version of the database software. This break may lead to both an operational issue that needs to be resolved and an information security issue that might go undetected. It’s possible that the information security issue will not be identified until penetration testing is conducted.”
Rimini Support, in powerful combination with Rimini Protect, provides not only customized fixes and configuration support by highly experienced engineers, but provides fast-response enterprise database security that does not require costly regression testing with its Rimini Street Advanced Database Security (ADS) offering. ADS also covers a next-generation database security solution, protecting all Oracle Database (and other database product) releases with efficient virtual patching that eliminates the need to upgrade databases only for security.
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Energy distributor, Suburban Propane, which services the residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural market through 700 locations, found a trusted partner in Rimini Street when it turned to Rimini Street ADS for its Oracle Database platform and had a new security software up and running in a test environment in less than a day. Ron Traub, senior operations manager at Suburban Propane said, “Rimini Street ADS gives us peace of mind. As soon as a virtual patch is released, we can apply it quickly. No need to schedule a maintenance window to bring a system down – and we don’t have to change code and perform regression testing.”
“Security and system uptime are on top of the priority list for every CIO, CTO, CISO and IT leader. Impact to either one can equate to a loss of not only revenue, but long-lasting brand damage and possible legal challenges, especially when dealing with breaches of highly sensitive information,” said Gabe Dimeglio, group vice president and general manager of Rimini Protect. “Our proven security support, products and services work to protect databases in a matter of seconds, versus the lengthy time it may take for vendors to release a security patch for newly-discovered vulnerabilities – if they release a patch at all. Further applying vendor code patches, especially for those with customized software running on top of the database, could create a greater risk to clients.”
Rimini Street Enables Fierce Competition and Business Innovation
Since switching to Rimini Street to take on support for Oracle Database, automaker giant, Hyundai Motor Group, has leveraged the “huge cost reductions achieved” to “invest in the technologies and expertise that will support future ground-breaking innovations.” Delighted with the quality of services received from Rimini Street, Hyundai elected to “further expand the scope of the contract to include added coverage for even more group affiliates and overseas offices,” said the Head of Department, Cloud Technology Team at Hyundai.
Reneke shared, “For a recent client who had over 5,000 database instances, over 90% were in Oracle Sustaining Support and the upgrade costs for that client would have been $17M. By moving to Rimini Street, they were able to avoid this cost and extend the life of their Oracle Database landscape with at least an additional 15 years of Rimini Support availability – and they also saved 50% on their annual maintenance fees compared to Oracle. We are freeing up IT budget and adding tremendous value by creating new opportunities for capital investment – a true win/win for our client.”
“Rimini Street is proud to add more and more organizations to our growing list of global clients relying on Rimini Support and Rimini Protect for Oracle Database to reduce total cost of ownership of the software, extend the life of their current release investment, enjoy better and more responsive service, achieve smoother operating outcomes and have the ability to re-focus the savings and their IT teams on strategic initiatives that help improve their competitive position and grow,” said Seth Ravin, president and CEO of Rimini Street.
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