Providing access to an on-site support team, technical expertise, and hybrid support frameworks, the latest version of SAP MaxAttention has been extended to cover evolving business and IT needs across all SAP solutions.

“As businesses embark on their digital transformation journeys, nothing is constant,” said Silvio Bessa, senior vice president and head, SAP MaxAttention, SAP Digital Business Services, SAP. “By enhancing partnerships for SAP MaxAttention through increased collaboration, transparency and solution coverage, we’re able to help our customers create positive, proactive change as opposed to feeling forced to react to the disruption around them,” he said.

To meet both business and IT needs, a team of SAP engineers, service professionals, and managers will collaborate with organisations to review the progress of their digital transformation, address engagement challenges, and provide proactive recommendations based on SAP innovation road maps and best practices.

The new version of SAP MaxAttention provides end-to-end support for all SAP solutions, whether on-premise, hybrid, or cloud, including co-designed solutions and SAP Leonardo technologies. Implementation support is now included for cloud offerings, cybersecurity and compliance guidance, and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) preparation.

The service and support plan now enables organisations to choose from three predefined engagement levels to best meet the needs of their specific organisation. Levels range from implementation planning to the design of customised application architectures and each option is scalable to provide targeted, predictable service outcomes.

To meet evolving needs, SAP plans to continue to evolve MaxAttention to help accelerate the adoption of SAP software both in the cloud and on-premise.

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Based in Seoul, Lee most recently held the position of vice president and head of maintenance go-to-market for SAP Korea. Responsible for growing and retaining SAP Support revenue, Lee led strategies for customer operational excellence while driving their digital transformation and innovations.

Lee was the very first employee of SAP Korea, where he established the legal entity in 1995, subsequently taking over the business in 2008. Since then he has established and grown the maintenance go-to-market businesses in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. Prior to joining SAP, Lee held senior finance and HR positions with Monsanto and Motorola.

“Digital transformation is inevitable and there’s no need for organisations to continue to overpay for on-premise support, whether they run SAP or Oracle,” said Lee. “I chose Spinnaker Support over other options because I believe they are best positioned to address current and future support demand in emerging Asia Pacific markets.”

“We’ve enjoyed tremendous success in Korea over the past year,” said Matt Stava, CEO, Spinnaker Support. ”JS is the ideal choice to lead our Asia Pacific operations through the next growth stage and to effectively communicate our unique value proposition to the progressive CIOs in the region.”

Spinnaker Support currently supports more than 140 clients with headquarters or operations in the Asia Pacific region.

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The company, which is running an ECC 5.0 system, began exploring how to improve productivity and optimise its IT costs by looking at two areas – finding alternatives to free up its IT staff to focus on more strategic, growth-related projects within the business, and exploring options for reducing the cost of its SAP ERP maintenance. SIFLEX was also looking for higher quality service around support.

“There is a common predicament in Korea, where CIOs and IT leaders are tasked with the challenge to reduce overall cost across their IT landscape, and at the same time, improve efficiency, support their organisation’s growth strategy, and execute digital transformation projects,” said Tae-joon Park, manager of the Management Information Team at SIFLEX.

“SIFLEX had the same predicament and when we evaluated our entire IT cost structure to find savings opportunities, the annual spend on our SAP maintenance stood out as a large proportion of our overall IT spend, yet we were receiving subpar service, far below our expectations in return. When we spoke to Rimini Street clients, we realised that we would be in good company among other CIOs who had made the decision to switch, and who are reaping the benefits of that strategic decision – not only in terms of the cost savings, but in liberating their resources and budget to enable their digital transformation initiatives.”

One of the considerations for SIFLEX when changing its support model was having immediate access to expert engineers.

“The biggest service advantage we found moving to Rimini Street support was the fact that we could speak directly to our assigned support engineer. Previously when I would raise a support ticket with the software vendor, there was no clarity as to whom was actually handling our support request and our issues were never resolved to our satisfaction. However, with Rimini Street, their engineers collaborate with each other under the leadership of our engineer until the problem is solved,” said Park.

In addition to cutting maintenance fees by 50 per cent with its move to Rimini Street, SIFLEX can also remain on its current system for a minimum of 15 years, and was able to free up internal IT personnel to work on other initiatives within the organisation.

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“With SAP Learning Hub, edition for SAP Enterprise Support, SAP Learning Hub should be used by our customers as the single entry point for knowledge about SAP,” said Jacques Pommeraud, senior vice president, global customer success, SAP. “Using this modern platform, key users, IT experts and business professionals alike will find the knowledge they need to use and consume our technology, and ultimately experience a faster ROI.”

The new edition integrates content in a self-paced, microlearning format, with learners able to access expert-led sessions and collaborate live with SAP support staff and engineers covering the cloud, on-premise solutions and hybrid scenarios.

“The increasing speed of innovation and product release cycles are driving the need for a frequent and continually evolving learning experience,” said Bernd Welz, executive vice president and chief knowledge officer, products and innovation, SAP. “As businesses seek to move their operations to the cloud, keeping the digital skills of their employees up-to-date is no longer an option.”

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Founded in 1970, SISCO has a history of making astute business decisions to maintain its competitive edge. The company has been running its SAP system since 2006, is now on release ECC 6.0.

“At the time of its introduction, we were completely satisfied with the functionality of our SAP system in terms of the automation of in-house mechanisms to carry out tasks, and found that it met our business needs perfectly,” said Shuji Takahashi, director, information systems department, SISCO.

“On the other hand, we felt it was a huge disadvantage to keep paying costly fixed expenses for its maintenance and operation, even though it was running smoothly,” said Takahashi, explaining the subsequent transition to Rimini Street for his Tokyo-headquartered company.

Rimini Street is not new to the demands of leading Japanese clients.

“As with many of our clients in Japan, Saison Information Systems is focused on maximising the value of their significant investment in SAP software and optimising the return on current IT expenditures,” said Yorio Wakisaka, general manager, North East Asia, Nihon Rimini Street.

“We are pleased to help our many SAP clients in Japan, including SISCO, to cost-effectively run their current robust SAP releases for a minimum of 15 years, and allocate IT budget to more strategic initiatives that engage customers and drive competitive advantage,” said Wakisaka.

Takahashi said the fact that each Rimini Street client is assigned a dedicated local Primary Support Engineer (PSE) was an important consideration in SISCO’s decision to choose the provider.

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The plan is an advanced solution built on top of SAP Enterprise Support, cloud edition, and covers metric-driven consumption planning, prioritised incident handling, advanced service-level agreements, new and enhanced usage reporting, best practice guidance, and other resources to identify inhibitors to adoption and business value.

Offered initially for SAP SuccessFactors solutions, S/4HANA Cloud and SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer, customers with a net annual cloud subscription of €20,000 (A$29,350) or higher are able to purchase the support plan, which is offered at a price of 20 per cent of the net annual cloud subscription.

“Incorporating success, adoption, learning and advanced support resources will help our customers to maximise the value of their cloud solutions from SAP and reach new heights for their businesses,” said Jacques Pommeraud, senior vice president, global customer success, SAP. “The SAP Preferred Success plan builds on our technical expertise, experience from helping thousands of customers and dedication to their success. Our goal is to help them successfully consume and run cloud solutions in a simpler and faster way.”

SAP is recommending all public cloud customers adopt SAP Preferred Success moving forward.

“In today’s market, customers are looking for business process improvements, operational assistance and proactive guidance from their support provider,” said Elaina Stergiades, research manager, IDC.
“New services and support offerings like SAP Preferred Success can help IT organizations meet those needs, allowing CIOs and IT managers to address business and IT issues more quickly and efficiently as their hybrid landscapes evolve.”

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The six new database platforms to be covered are IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server and SAP ASE, SAP IQ, SAP SQL Anywhere and SAP Advantage Server (formerly the SAP Sybase family of database products).

Rimini Street already provides support for IBM DB2 Tools for Linux, UNIX and Windows, Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio, and SAP Replication Server.

For the newly supported platforms, Rimini Street will provide the same support program features as for Oracle and SAP HANA database licensees, offered at 50 per cent of the price of current annual vendor support fees.

“According to Gartner Research, Oracle, Microsoft, IBM and SAP are the top four database software vendors by market share, representing nearly 83 per cent of the total global database market combined. The addition of these six additional database products from IBM, Microsoft and SAP to our growing portfolio of supported enterprise software products, gives even more enterprise software licensees the opportunity to leverage Rimini Street’s award-winning support, to enjoy a more robust, relevant and responsive support model, and to liberate substantial funds that can be re-directed to strategic growth initiatives,” said Seth Ravin, Rimini Street CEO.

“Today’s announcement further executes on our plan to broaden our product coverage portfolio, expand our service capabilities, and increase our service footprint with clients.”

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The merger will provide Rimini Street with an injection of growth capital that will be used to expand their service offerings, to strengthen their balance sheet and to fund potential acquisitions going forward.

“I am looking forward to the next chapter of Rimini Street growth that will be fuelled by this merger,” said Andrew Powell, managing director, Rimini Street, APAC.

“The additional capital will further enable and accelerate global expansion in regions like ANZ and APAC where we are experiencing growth that is even higher than the company average globally,” he said.

In addition to providing subscription-based support services for a range of SAP software, Rimini Street also supports clients of Oracle, Siebel and other vendors, with almost 1900 clients and about 900 employees in 13 countries. The company reported annual run-rate revenues exceeding US$196 million as of March 31.

Founded in 2005, Rimini Street set out to transform customer support by providing seasoned experts on the front-line and by supporting customisations as part of their core services.

Seth A. Ravin, founder, CEO and chairman of the board of directors of Rimini Street, will be appointed CEO and chairman of the board of directors of the new corporation when the merger completes, which is expected to be by the third quarter this year.

“Rimini Street has delivered 45 consecutive quarters of revenue growth by providing value-driven, innovative support solutions and exceptional service that meet the global needs of enterprise software licensees,” said Ravin. “We believe that having a public company structure will further fuel our growth by facilitating additional sales opportunities and providing additional capital market access.”

“Rimini Street is a proven innovator and market disruptor,” said Antonio Bonchristiano, CEO, GPIAC and GP Investments. “As a high-growth company capitalising on a large, global addressable market, Rimini Street presents an attractive investment opportunity. The company’s client value proposition, seasoned management team, track record of execution and years of consecutive growth are very compelling.”

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The vendor has also launched its ‘Schedule an Expert’ live support channel and Guided Answers service, an automated self-service tool which helps customers to solve incidents on their own during structured decision trees.

According to SAP, their Next-Generation Support offering aims to help IT users work more effectively with their software by providing context-sensitive help through a readily accessible knowledge base and consultation with experts.

“Providing always-on omnichannel support for our customers, in which users can find answers in the channel of their choice – or in multiple channels, if they like – is essential in the delivery of a delightful user experience,” said Andreas Heckmann, senior vice president and head of Support Delivery, SAP.

“Live and direct access to our support experts helps the people using our products to get answers quickly. Bringing support into the product itself is a big step forward. SAP will continue to rethink support, putting the customer experience first, and provide innovative solutions to support customers in running their business.”

SAP will preview its built-in support capability for S/4HANA Cloud, which will reportedly bring support features and access to experts inside the product, at this year’s SAPPHIRE NOW event, which will also be the forum for the official launch of the Schedule an Expert service.

The new Next-Generation Support features are part of the support offerings provided on-premise or in the cloud.

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Japan is one of the fastest growing markets for Rimini Street, with revenue up by 63 per cent over the year to end September 2016. Among its customers in this market are Pioneer Corporation, Kumagai Gumi Co., Ltd., CAC Corporation, Nishimatsu Construction Co., Ltd., Chugoku Mokuzai Co., Ltd. and CMK Corporation.

With such strong growth, Rimini Street has also invested in significant hires in the region to meet this demand, with Nobutake Gohdo appointed as vice president of client engagement and service delivery, Nihon Rimini Street.

A veteran of Citrix, Oracle, and SAP, where he was vice president, active global support Japan, Gohdo will be responsible for the region’s service delivery engineers and enterprise account managers.

“As many IT leaders are looking for ways to cut costs from their IT landscape, reducing their ERP maintenance spend by moving to Rimini Street’s independent software support is an attractive option for them,” said Yorio Wakisaka, country manager, Nihon Rimini Street.

“Rimini Street offers an enormous benefit to Oracle and SAP software licensees in this challenging environment and allows CIOs to reinvest the significant cost savings they achieve back into their business for innovative initiatives that help differentiate their company against the competition and support growth initiatives.”

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