Rimini Street: Championing Choice in Enterprise Software

Rimini Street is a global leader in third-party support for enterprise applications. In the 20 years since it was founded, Rimini Street has amassed a portfolio of more than 5,900 contracts worldwide, facilitating more than US$9bn in client savings.

It’s often cited as the company that kicked off having third-party support for enterprise software applications, according to its Senior Vice President of Global Partners, Alliances and Channels, Kevin Purcell.

“Our primary support engineers have, on average, more than 20 years of experience,” Kevin begins. “These are folks who come from enterprise software companies to join Rimini Street on our mission.”

As a “global leader in end-to-end third-party enterprise software support management and innovation solutions” — as phrased by Kevin — Rimini Street has a broad remit, allowing it to act not just as a service provider, but as a strategic partner to some of the world’s largest organisations.

This comes as enterprises are met with increasing pressure from software vendors — particularly giants like SAP and Oracle — to migrate to cloud-based, subscription models. These transitions are often costly, disruptive and not always aligned with a customer’s business priorities. Rimini Street offers a compelling alternative: long-term support for existing systems, enabling organisations to delay or avoid forced upgrades and cloud migrations.

“Customers have limited resource, limited budget and they need help,” Kevin says, aware of the challenges facing customers. “In a competitive environment customers need partners like Rimini Street to really help them get there.” 

Rimini Street and optionality

Rimini Street’s business model hinges on giving customers freedom, particularly by maintaining legacy systems while avoiding expensive and disruptive upgrades. For Kevin, Rimini Street’s “optionality” model sets the business apart, making it a competitive differentiator in a vendor-locked industry.

But for Rimini Street, this philosophy is more than a marketing slogan but a direct response to vendor lock-in — a situation where customers feel trapped by the upgrade and support cycles of major software providers. 

“Our customers are looking for options. They don’t want to be locked into a vendor, and that’s what optionality means,” Kevin explains. Rimini Street’s approach empowers organisations to make IT decisions on their own terms, rather than being dictated to by vendors.

“Optionality in the industry is really important to me, because our customers are looking for options,” Kevin says. “They don’t want to be locked into a vendor. We are striking these partnerships so that we have more “feet on the street” to tell this compelling story and share the benefits of Rimini Street’s Services.”

With Rimini Street’s customer base including users of SAP, Oracle and VMware, this message of empowerment is resonating. Many of these see the company as a trusted partner rather than just another supplier. The consultative approach Rimini Street takes is a key differentiator. 

“We are taking the consultative approach,” Kevin shares. “We’re not saying we’re the good guys and they’re the bad guys. What we’re actually saying is, look, we are another option that provides a better service at a much lower cost.” 

Rimini Street’s service proposition is underpinned by robust operational commitments. The company offers 24/7/365 support, with service-level agreements guaranteeing a 10-minute response time for critical issues. Engineers with decades of experience provide support for up to 15 years on software releases that vendors no longer maintain, even when those systems have been heavily customised.

For Kevin, trust is the foundation of Rimini Street’s client relationships. This helps ensure the building of trust with its enterprise clients, particularly at a time when customer needs are changing more than ever.

“These relationships, like any, are like a marriage,” Kevin says. “We build our trust by doing what our customer is expecting and delivering on our promises. Our tagline for our overall strategy is ‘we’ll get you there’. You do what you say you’re going to do and you deliver and make sure that customers get what they need.”

Strategic alliances and the power of partnership

Rimini Street’s strategy is not just about resisting the status quo — it is about scaling a new vision for enterprise IT. Central to this ambition are strategic alliances. 

Since joining Rimini Street, Kevin and his team have signed numerous partnerships, including high-profile deals with ServiceNow and Merlin Cyber. These alliances are designed to expand Rimini Street’s reach and enhance its value proposition.

The partnership with Merlin Cyber, for example, targets the federal sector in the United States. Merlin Cyber brings deep expertise in public sector sales and technology innovation — particularly when it comes to the US Federal Government — while Rimini Street delivers cost-effective software support and modernisation. By working alongside Merlin Cyber, Rimini Street’s goal is to help government agencies reduce IT costs and extend the life of existing software assets-freeing up budget for innovation and mission-critical projects.

“Merlin Cyber has a tremendous product services portfolio around cyber security which matches its robust knowledge base in the federal government,” Kevin says. “With us, they bring much of that federal experience to ‘federalise’ our services, which is what we want to do. This partnership is going to be a key partnership for that area of our business.”

This intrinsic knowledge is both set to propel prospective partners and benefit Rimini Street’s client base, making the collaboration one that will continue to evolve, grow and bring benefits.

But for Kevin, it’s not just its partnership with Merlin Cyber that is exciting. As someone who sees partnerships as an integral part of Rimini Street’s DNA, he sees Rimini Street’s approach as something that enables the business to address the unique needs of different industries, from healthcare to the public sector.

“With partnerships, we bring companies into our ecosystem that bring a special value proposition to the table,” Kevin explains. “They often do things that will enhance our offerings in the marketplace such as specific industry expertise.

“We’ll continue to look for partners that help broaden our value proposition to our customer base. Looking ahead at where we want to go, I want to focus on partners that are willing to bring innovation into the dynamic. 

“What’s also very critical is that we want to make sure that the selection process of our partners — and how we build out those partnerships — is based on data. We’re taking a close look at the partnerships that are actually driving success. We’re also going to benchmark and create new best practices and replicate these across other partnerships.

“Partnerships are the core of what I and my team do. The team is completely focused on developing the right partnerships. What this means to me is that when I look at where the company wants to go, partnerships have to be able to deliver higher customer satisfaction among our clients. Many of these partners have been servicing these customers for many years. They're trusted by the companies that they serve, and Rimini Street is another key component of how they'll help support their customer base.”

Rimini Street: Looking ahead

As well as this, Kevin is looking to further bring AI systems into Rimini Street’s operations going forward. Here, he sees tremendous opportunity and hopes it will support him leading the charge on partnerships for Rimini Street. 

“Technology​ is evolving rapidly and AI is disrupting everything,” he says.

This is a large part of how he sees the next 12 to 18 months for him and Rimini Street, with a focus on innovation — particularly in areas like AI and workflow automation — central to integrating these capabilities into existing software environments. As a result, Rimini Street clients will be able to modernise without the disruption and the significant expense of upgrades and migrations. 

“My team and I are always focusing on the future,” Kevin says. “From a company perspective, we have high aspirations.”

These ambitions include growing its revenue structure into the billions and expanding into new industries. As to be expected, partnerships are a core pillar of this strategy — with data driving how AI and systems can help Rimini Street continue to drive more successful partnerships.

“We also want to make sure that, ultimately, the future is very bright for our customers — the more and more customers that stop doing upgrades for the sake of it, we’ll see more and more companies taking a closer look at the innovation that we provide.

“There’s a bright future ahead for not only Rimini Street but also for our customers.”

To read the full article in the magazine, click HERE.