Dipo Olowookere
By Dipo Olowookere
Global provider of enterprise software products and services, and the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products, Rimini Street, has announced expanding its operations in the Asia-Pacific region with the launch of its new subsidiary, Rimini Street New Zealand Limited, and the opening of its new office in Auckland to address the growing demand for Rimini Street’s premium, ultra-responsive support services in New Zealand.
Rimini Street’s expansion was announced at a gala event held at The Northern Club in Auckland, where clients, local IT leaders and the special guest of honour, Ambassador Scott P. Brown, the U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand, were hosted by Rimini Street’s general manager for Asia-Pacific, Andrew Powell, and Rimini Street corporate senior executives.
Rimini Street launched its new subsidiary in response to the region’s increasing desire for software support solutions that can help optimize their IT spend and enable them to liberate significant funding for their business transformation initiatives. Rimini Street already supports nearly 50 clients with operations in New Zealand, including local brands James Pascoe, Spark, 2Degrees Mobile, Refining New Zealand and The University of Auckland.
By switching to Rimini Street support from the vendor’s support, these organizations have saved up to 90 percent of the total cost of maintenance of their SAP and Oracle software assets, and are able to run their current ERP releases with no forced upgrades for a minimum of 15 years from the date they switched support. Rimini Street clients also benefit from the Company’s flexible, premium-level enterprise software support model, including its industry-leading Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 15-minute response times for critical Priority 1 cases. In addition, each client is assigned a Primary Support Engineer (PSE) with an average of 15 years’ experience in their particular enterprise software system, backed by a broader team of technical experts. By switching their support to Rimini Street, organizations are able to take back control of their IT roadmaps with a ”business-driven roadmap” strategy that provides much more flexibility and value compared to the vendor roadmap, allowing CIOs to focus on creating value and providing competitive advantage for growth.
“Organizations in New Zealand, both public and private, spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on their annual enterprise software support and maintenance, yet see little return from this significant spend,” said Andrew Powell, general manager, Asia-Pacific, Rimini Street. “Our conversations with CIOs are squarely focused on how we can help them dramatically lower the total cost of ownership of their stable, mature enterprise systems as part of a hybrid computing model and business-driven roadmap, and as a result, we are experiencing increased demand in the region. With Rimini Street, organizations have the option to break free from the seemingly never-ending upgrade cycle dictated by the vendor’s roadmap – an expensive and disruptive path for companies to undertake just to stay fully supported. With our new operation in Auckland, we are better able to engage with and support organizations in New Zealand who want to significantly cut their software support spend and take back control of their IT roadmaps.”
Recent research from Vanson Bourne, commissioned by Rimini Street, found that enterprises in the ANZ region plan to spend the second-least amount on IT innovation in the world in the next 12 months, and they plan to increase their IT innovation spend by just 6.31% in the 12 months following the survey, well below the global average of 10.94%.
“New Zealand is famous for innovation, but it is at risk of falling behind the rest of the world,” continued Powell. “New Zealand CIOs know that it’s important to spend their IT budgets on more than daily operations. With budget pressures between operating costs and the need to invest in innovation, CIOs need to reassess the value of existing support arrangements and explore better software support options designed to provide a greater ROI. Rimini Street enables CIOs in New Zealand to unlock significant savings and redirect that funding into critical innovation initiatives.”
