Survey of SAP Licensees Reveals Two-Thirds Have No Plans or Are Undecided About Migrating to New S/4HANA Product

Business Wire India
Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner, today revealed the findings from its recent survey of SAP licensees conducted to better understand their plans for S/4HANA and the impact of SAP’s planned 2025 end of mainstream maintenance support for Business Suite 7 core applications on their IT roadmap plans. Of the IT leaders surveyed who are currently running SAP’s Business Suite 7 or older releases, two-thirds state they either have no plans to migrate to S/4HANA (35%) or are undecided about moving to S/4HANA (32%). The top reasons cited include “lack of resources,” “no business justification,” and a preference to “maximize investment in current applications.” The number of respondents who stated they have no plans to migrate or are undecided has risen slightly from a previous survey in 2017 – at that time 65% of IT leaders stated they had no plans to migrate or were undecided about S/4HANA. The current survey of SAP licensees was conducted in April 2019 and includes C-level executives, and VPs, directors and managers of IT.
 

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190619005087/en/

 

SAP Customers Plan to Run Their Current Applications Beyond 2025
 

Survey responses confirm that nearly 80% of SAP licensees plan to continue to run their customized, mature SAP systems to at least or beyond SAP's planned 2025 end of mainstream maintenance date for Business Suite 7. SAP licensees have made significant investments to implement and customize their highly functional SAP systems that meet their business needs and these existing systems can serve as their reliable mission-critical platform for many years to come without requiring the need to upgrade.
 

“We were experiencing the push many ECC 6.0 customers face with SAP trying to move everyone to the S/4HANA platform. When some of the larger SAP customers also refused to pay for that reimplementation in exchange for an immature product, we knew that S/4HANA was not a road we wanted to go down,” said Bob Leek, CIO, Multnomah County. “By switching to Rimini Street’s support, not only do we receive a far superior level of service, but we can continue to run our current SAP system for a minimum of 15 additional years from the time that we switched our SAP support to Rimini Street in 2016. This takes the pressure off having to migrate to SAP S/4HANA by 2025 when we see no return on that investment for the cost and disruption to the business. Additionally, as a result of moving our support, we have also been able to redirect our staff to focus on more value-added activities.”
 

Challenges with SAP Support
 

When asked about the value of SAP’s support, only 5% of all survey respondents stated they felt the fees for SAP support are well worth the value they receive in return. However, respondents also cited several challenges with SAP’s support, including “lack of support for customizations,” “issues take too long to resolve,” and “no new innovations or enough functional enhancements for what we are paying.” “Lack of expertise or adequate knowledge to resolve issues” also topped the list. Licensees are often left to self-support issues on their own by assigning internal resources or working with outside consultants. The inefficiencies with SAP’s support model can create considerable business disruption and a poor use of internal resources spent just to keep the system operational.
 

“With SAP’s expensive, time-consuming and resource-intensive forced migration to their S/4HANA product, SAP 4.x and ECC licensees have two choices – stay on SAP’s vendor-dictated roadmap and continue to invest in undesired, forced upgrades, or choose a Business-Driven Roadmap designed specifically around their business objectives,” said Seth A. Ravin, Rimini Street CEO. “SAP licensees who switch to Rimini Street support can extend their existing release lifespan and value for at least 15 more years, eliminate 2025 deadline fears, maximize savings and minimize system change risk while being able to invest operational savings into accelerated innovation. Rimini Street clients also gain flexibility and time to reassess the viability and business case of a potential future S/4HANA migration, or choose a next-generation system that best fits their future needs.”
 

To access a copy of Rimini Street’s report “How Customers are Responding to SAP’s Planned 2025 End of ECC6 Mainstream Maintenance Deadline” click here.
 

About Rimini Street, Inc.
 

Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI) is a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner. The Company has redefined enterprise software support services since 2005 with an innovative, award-winning program that enables licensees of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, SAP and other enterprise software vendors to save up to 90 percent on total maintenance costs. Clients can remain on their current software release without any required upgrades for a minimum of 15 years. Over 1,850 global Fortune 500, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries currently rely on Rimini Street as their trusted, third-party support provider. To learn more, please visit http://www.riministreet.com, follow @riministreet on Twitter and find Rimini Street on Facebook and LinkedIn. (C-RMNI)
 

Forward-Looking Statements
 

Certain statements included in this communication are not historical facts but are forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements generally are accompanied by words such as “may,” “should,” “would,” “plan,” “intend,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” “seem,” “seek,” “continue,” “future,” “will,” “expect,” “outlook” or other similar words, phrases or expressions. These forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our expectations of future events, future opportunities, global expansion and other growth initiatives and our investments in such initiatives. These statements are based on various assumptions and on the current expectations of management and are not predictions of actual performance, nor are these statements of historical facts. These statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties regarding Rimini Street’s business, and actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, changes in the business environment in which Rimini Street operates, including inflation and interest rates, and general financial, economic, regulatory and political conditions affecting the industry in which Rimini Street operates; adverse developments in pending litigation or in the government inquiry or any new litigation; the final amount and timing of any refunds from Oracle related to our litigation; our need and ability to raise additional equity or debt financing on favorable terms and our ability to generate cash flows from operations to help fund increased investment in our growth initiatives; the sufficiency of our cash and cash equivalents to meet our liquidity requirements; the terms and impact of our outstanding 13.00% Series A Preferred Stock; changes in taxes, laws and regulations; competitive product and pricing activity; difficulties of managing growth profitably; the success of our recently introduced products and services, including Rimini Street Mobility, Rimini Street Analytics, Rimini Street Advanced Database Security, and services for Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud products, in addition to products and services we expect to introduce in the near future; the loss of one or more members of Rimini Street’s management team; uncertainty as to the long-term value of Rimini Street’s equity securities; and those discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” in Rimini Street’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed on May 9, 2019, and as updated from time to time by Rimini Street’s future Annual Reports on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and other filings by Rimini Street with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, forward-looking statements provide Rimini Street’s expectations, plans or forecasts of future events and views as of the date of this communication. Rimini Street anticipates that subsequent events and developments will cause Rimini Street’s assessments to change. However, while Rimini Street may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, Rimini Street specifically disclaims any obligation to do so, except as required by law. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing Rimini Street’s assessments as of any date subsequent to the date of this communication.
 

© 2019 Rimini Street, Inc. All rights reserved. “Rimini Street” is a registered trademark of Rimini Street, Inc. in the United States and other countries, and Rimini Street, the Rimini Street logo, and combinations thereof, and other marks marked by TM are trademarks of Rimini Street, Inc. All other trademarks remain the property of their respective owners, and unless otherwise specified, Rimini Street claims no affiliation, endorsement, or association with any such trademark holder or other companies referenced herein.
 

 

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190619005087/en/

MULTIMEDIA AVAILABLE :
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190619005087/en/