LAS VEGAS--October 05, 2020 -- Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI), a global provider of business software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner, today revealed significant findings from its recent survey of Oracle PeopleSoft licensees, which was conducted to better understand licensees’ software product and release roadmap strategies, current challenges and application support and operating plans. The survey highlights that an overwhelming 97% of respondents believe their current PeopleSoft releases meet all or most of their business needs. Further, many licensees are taking steps to maximize the value and extend the lifespan of their robust and mature current releases, including moving their PeopleSoft software to a cloud hosting platform, utilizing Application Management Services and switching their annual support to third-party support providers like Rimini Street.

Oracle licensees who responded to the Rimini Street survey include a mix of CIOs and VPs of IT, IT directors and managers, application managers, application leads and Oracle administrators across a variety of industries including Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Education, Telecommunications, Building and Construction, Government, Transportation and Logistics, Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences, Insurance, and Oil and Gas.

To access a copy of Rimini Street’s report, “Survey Report: Licensees’ Insights into the Future of Their PeopleSoft Roadmaps,” click here (https://bit.ly/3isY9jr).

Licensees Maximizing the Value and Extending the Lifespan of Current Releases

Instead of investing significant time, resources and capital to perform what they view as expensive, low ROI release upgrades or full migrations to Oracle Cloud ERP, many PeopleSoft licensees are taking steps to maximize the value and extend the lifespan of their current, robust and mature releases.

For example, despite PeopleSoft 9.2 being generally available since March 2013[1], 64% of respondents are still running at least part of their business on PeopleSoft 9.1 or earlier releases, which are no longer fully supported by Oracle. Currently, less than 50% of respondents have indicated any definitive plans to upgrade their PeopleSoft applications.

Vendor Support is Expensive and Provides Low Value for PeopleSoft 9.1 or Earlier Releases

For PeopleSoft licensees who are continuing to utilize their current PeopleSoft 9.1 or earlier release and have chosen not to upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.2, they are now in Oracle Sustaining Support and no longer get access to new fixes, critical patch updates or tax, legal and regulatory updates. Despite the reduced service breadth, 72% of respondents running PeopleSoft 9.1 or earlier releases are still paying Oracle for expensive and low value Sustaining Support that does not meet their full support needs, resulting in 43% of these same PeopleSoft licensees also paying Oracle additional fees for supplemental critical tax, legal and regulatory updates, and 39% having to allocate their own resources to help fill the service gap by self-supporting their PeopleSoft environments.

PeopleSoft 9.2 Provides Limited Additional Business Value and ROI

Of those licensees who are currently planning to eventually upgrade to PeopleSoft 9.2, nearly 85% indicated they are doing so primarily for support reasons and not to implement or leverage the benefits of any new features or functional enhancements. In fact, according to a poll by the Quest Oracle Community, nearly half of PeopleSoft 9.2 licensees have rolled out zero new features to end users[2].

Of the respondents who are running PeopleSoft 9.2, 53% indicated that they did not leverage strong innovation on a consistent basis from new Oracle PeopleSoft 9.2 updates. However, despite the updates providing a seemingly low ROI and value, 96% indicated it can be very expensive and time-consuming to apply the Oracle PeopleSoft 9.2 updates, taking up to six weeks to test, validate and apply just one update, requiring an average of three-to-five resources during that time to perform the work.

Despite these significant cost and resources needed to complete an Oracle PeopleSoft 9.2 update, the majority of PeopleSoft 9.2 survey respondents appear to stay current with Oracle’s updates primarily to ensure that they retain access to Oracle full support.

PeopleSoft Licensees are Leveraging the Cloud to Extend the Lifespan of Current Releases

The survey also revealed that cloud continues to play an integral role in the future of licensees’ PeopleSoft roadmaps, with 87% of all respondents currently evaluating, actively moving to, or already running some or all their PeopleSoft applications on a cloud platform. Migrating their PeopleSoft system to a cloud environment can eliminate the need for significant capital investments in data center server refreshes, reduce operating costs and provide better user performance. In fact, 29% of respondents indicate that they have already migrated their PeopleSoft system to a cloud hosting provider. Lifting and shifting existing PeopleSoft software to a cloud environment provides the cloud-related benefits noted above, while allowing the respondents to extend the lifespan of their proven, current software releases for many additional years without having to address aging hardware infrastructure challenges.

Challenges with Oracle Support Persist

Finally, the survey underscores that challenges persist with regard to Oracle annual maintenance and support in comparison to the perceived benefit of that support, consistent with findings from a 2019 survey. The number one issue surfaced in the current survey, cited by 56% of all respondents, is the high annual maintenance and support fees charged by Oracle. Additionally, 43% of respondents cited dissatisfaction with the time it takes for Oracle to respond to issues, 43% of respondents noted that they have to escalate priority tickets to get the right expertise, and 16% of respondents were dissatisfied that Oracle annual maintenance and support does not provide support for customizations as a standard feature.

Rimini Street Helps Organizations Take Back Control of PeopleSoft Roadmaps

Rimini Street enables clients to maximize the value and extend the lifespan of current PeopleSoft releases by saving 50% on vendor annual support fees and up to 90% on the total cost of maintenance for PeopleSoft, while supporting their existing PeopleSoft releases for a minimum of an additional 15 years without any forced upgrades or updates. Clients enjoy faster, more comprehensive support including 10-minute response SLAs for critical P1 issues, the industry’s fastest Legislature-to-LiveTM tax, legal and regulatory updates, and support for custom code and integrations, all at no extra cost. With Rimini Street, IT organizations running PeopleSoft are able to leverage immediate budget and time savings to focus on the strategic priorities of their business, without Oracle dictating their roadmap decisions or timing.

“While our PeopleSoft 9.2 software release more than meets our business needs, we were struggling to justify the cost required to support the platform. In comparison to the cost, time and resources required for us to keep up to date on the vendor’s forced updates just to remain in full support, we were not getting sufficient support from the vendor in return,” said Ho Lee, HR and IT Service Team Leader, Kolon Benit. “We moved to Rimini Street Support and now save significantly on our annual maintenance, plus we are guaranteed a minimum of 15 years’ support for our current PeopleSoft software release. This has enabled us to free up significant resource and budget to focus on more strategic initiatives within the business.”

“Our PeopleSoft survey indicates an overall trend that many PeopleSoft licensees are taking steps to maximize the value and extend the useful life of their current PeopleSoft releases, but they need a better support solution that provides more value at a lower cost, and doesn’t require any forced upgrades or updates for years to come,” said Frank Reneke, group vice president and general manager, Oracle Services, Rimini Street. “PeopleSoft licensees who switch to Rimini Street Support can extend the lifespan of their existing release for a minimum of 15 years with no required updates, upgrades or migrations at up to a 90% total maintenance and support cost savings. Tax, legal and regulatory updates and full customization support are included at no additional charge. They can also leverage Rimini Street Application Management Services for PeopleSoft to run their system - creating an efficient, managed ‘turnkey’ solution that integrates operations and support into a single offering, provided by a single, fully-accountable vendor.”