BrightSource Energy will use Rimini Street for future support of four Oracle products. Additionally Rimini Street announced that they will support Oracle EBS, Database, Fusion Middleware and Agile PLM products rather than Oracle. The savings generated by the deal will enable BrightSource Energy to invest in a hybrid IT architecture, mixing on-premises with cloud-based solutions.
Shimi Ben Baruch, global vice president, information officer of BrightSource Energy commented: “We initially engaged with Rimini Street in Israel for support of our Oracle EBS and technology products. The Company delivered beyond their promise on a premium, hyper-responsive support service, and provided us with a local primary support engineer (PSE). With this exceptional level of service, we quickly added Rimini Street support for our Oracle Agile PLM application, providing us with operational efficiencies including complex customization support and substantial cost reductions. Our collaboration with Rimini Street has enabled us to improve our business efficiencies and re-allocate our dollars to digital transformation initiatives that help our business grow and compete.”
Switching to Rimini Street doesn’t mean leaving Oracle
While Oracle are no doubt unhappy that BrightSource have switched to Rimini Street, they should perhaps look to the longer term. With the savings generated from the switch of support, BrightSource invested in a new Oracle HCM cloud project. During the Q3 2017 earnings call Mark Hurd, CEO at Oracle said it was a deal taken from Workday.
Phil Wilmington Co-President of Workday clarified that this was before Workday was installed. It was not a lost customer despite the inference from Hurd. The main benefit of Oracle HCM cloud solution for BrightSource is global access to HR from any device.
BrightSource energy started the initiative in Israel
BrightSource Energy is a global company that designs, develops and deploys solar thermal technology. This produces high-value electricity and steam for power, petroleum, and industrial-process markets worldwide. In a pilot in Israel, BrightSource proved the support capabilities of Rimini Street to its satisfaction. This shows that multinationals are able to test out Rimini Street in a single geography before rolling out globally. It has enabled BrightSource energy to generate savings that it can re-investment in IT projects. What wasn’t clear from the press release is whether that support agreement is now global. One suspects it will become global soon, depending on what the next project for BrightSource Energy is.
Jack Oster, general manager, Rimini Street Israel and Eastern Europe said: “Israel is a hotbed for new innovation but many CIOs are struggling to find budget dollars to invest in big data, cloud, IoT and other disruptive technologies to help their organizations drive greater growth. With Rimini Street, companies in Israel and around the world are able to cut their SAP and Oracle software maintenance by 90% in total support costs to fund digital transformation. Today, more than 75 global companies with operations in Israel and Eastern Europe, including five of the Maof-25 Index companies, have signed agreements with Rimini Street to provide support services for their enterprise systems.”
Conclusion
For large enterprises concerned about how to fund their migration to cloud Rimini Street provide one avenue to find funds. Rimini Street believes that they can provide up to a 90% saving on support for Oracle and SAP applications. It is surprising that Oracle are not more proactive in migrating their customer base to the cloud. They could keep the whole process completely cost neutral for customers rather than losing revenues in this way. The risk for Oracle and SAP is that customers make savings on maintenance. They and can then look to migrate to cloud by using Workday or another competitor.
Meanwhile Rimini Street appears to be accelerating their success across the world. Their re-financing is complete and the latest results showing a 39% growth for their Oracle support products. They are clearly hurting Oracle revenues again.
