Rimini Street Bumps SAP Support to Add Extra 15 Years
With the 2027 S/4HANA migration SAP deadline platform looming, global third-party software support services provider Rimini Street has pledged to continue to support any legacy SAP product or release for an additional 15 years.
Crucially, the specialist provider of end-to-end enterprise software support for SAP said the offer was not conditional on installing costly upgrades, and would allow customers both the time and flexibility to execute their long-term Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) strategy.
Rimini Street says SAP licensees utilising the Rimini Support for SAP service will receive a guaranteed 15 additional years of support including customisations, delivery of regulatory updates, direct access to an assigned Primary Support Engineer, guaranteed 10-minute response time for critical cases, and an average 90-second response time from its global senior engineering team.
In addition, Rimini Street is offering immediate savings of 50% off annual maintenance fees, and has pledged customers can save up to 90% on their total current SAP support costs.
Rimini Street’s move also comes against the backdrop of SAP raising on-premise support costs for two consecutive years, with prices to rise in 2024 in line with local consumer price index rates.
Many on-premises licensees are already feeling the pressure to migrate from SAP ECC to S/4HANA by the 2027 deadline, after which it will cease to support ECC from 2030.
“SAP ECC can help the business run today,” explained Brad Hiquet, an ERP strategist and SAP integration architect writing for techtarget.com. “But to get where the business needs to go tomorrow, the infrastructure provided by SAP S/4HANA provides a foot in the door of the SAP intelligent enterprise. The real power of the move to S/4HANA isn't in the ERP differences today; it's in the business differences tomorrow.”
At the company’s Q2 earnings briefing in July 2023, SAP indicated that the company’s latest innovations and capabilities will in future be delivered solely through its Cloud-enabled platforms.
“This is how we will deliver these innovations with speed, agility, quality and efficiency,” said SAP CEO Christian Klein. “Our new innovations will not be available for on-premise or hosted on-premise ERP customers on hyperscalers.”
Rimini Street group vice president Luiz Mariotto said more than 800 SAP licensees have already selected Rimini Street to support their software requirements. “Rimini Street empowers SAP licensees with the ability to explore a wider selection of solutions that best fit their business needs of today and tomorrow,” he said.
“Freedom from vendor-dictated roadmaps, often riddled with costly, unneeded upgrades and migrations, allow IT leaders to focus invaluable time, budget and company resources on strategic projects to fuel growth.”
“With guaranteed additional 15 years of quality, dependable support of mission-critical systems, Rimini Street helps IT be viewed as a strategic partner to the business, not a cost centre.”