The I.T. Side

A New Chapter

Now that Mercury Technology Group is in good hands as Velocity, I decided to move into a new chapter in my career.

I’m thrilled to announce that I have joined Rimini Street Inc.

For those that know Rimini Street, you already know that our core service is helping customers all over the globe save money by switching from vendor (e.g., Oracle, SAP) maintenance-support by switching to Rimini support. The initial savings are half of what customers are paying in maintenance fees today.

For me, I accepted the position of Global Vice President of Strategic Services where I will be growing our advanced strategic offerings exclusive to our clients in the way of advanced security services, functional support services, license management advisory services, advanced technical services, roadmaps, mobility and analytics.

For those of you that know me, are readers of this blog, or follow me on social media, you know that in the last decade I have spent a lot of time specializing in the IT side of Oracle software – a lot of Hyperion, a lot of BI.  Of course, Rimini fully supports these products, however my role is a much broader stroke – and I couldn’t be happier to join an amazing team of professionals.

Rimini has roughly 1000 employees with an annual revenue of over $200M.  They went public late last year and is traded under the Nasdaq symbol RMNI. Rimini’s model is simple – hire the best people (10 years or more of product experience) and deliver stellar support that is better, stronger, and faster than any vendor out there at half the cost. No brainer, right?

Anyway, make no mistake about it, I am still very much, if not more so, part of the Oracle user community and will stay tightly involved within the Oracle user group. I plan on continuing my work in the OAUG and the ODTUG, participating in the corresponding conferences, and contributing educational content as needed. However, due to the nature of the new role, I felt it best to resign from the Oracle ACE program that I have been a part of since 2009. I will truly miss all of them.

As for “The I.T. Side,“ I’m not sure. I assume my blogging and social media will be much less frequent, and will be a much different subject matter than followers have been accustom. I guess we will see.

The good thing is that over the years we have seen much more volunteer participation in the Oracle community for products outside the core database such as Hyperion, BI, etc. (even blockchain sessions at this years’ KSCOPE!). We have more bloggers than ever, and more Oracle ACEs representing apps and middleware – it’s fantastic. The community is certainly in great hands. Of course, at the same time, we have also seen very prominent advocates leave the ACE program and their blogging legacy in pursuit of opportunities elsewhere. Many just recently. They all have their reasons. It’s an interesting time.

But hey – that’s the way careers go, that’s the way the industry works – we all wish everyone the very best and look forward to any opportunity to see friends and colleagues at events all over the world.

There are too many people to list to thank for helping me in my Hyperion / BI focused career….so I won’t even attempt it. You all know who you are and I especially take my hat off to those that provided and still publish amazing content, for free, on nights and weekends with no compensation or expectation of anything in return.

So I’ll leave it at that. Onward and upward. Of course if I can be if any help to anyone – be it Hyperion, BI, or helping save money on vendor support/maintenance costs, please let me know.

The views, opinions, and positions expressed by the author are mine alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or positions of my employer, its affiliates, or any employee thereof. 

About Rimini Street

Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI) is a global provider of enterprise software products and services, and the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products. The company has redefined enterprise software support services since 2005 with an innovative, award-winning program that enables licensees of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP and other enterprise software vendors to save up to 90 percent on total support costs. Clients can remain on their current software release without any required upgrades for a minimum of 15 years. Over 1,560 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 https://www.riministreet.com, follow @riministreet on Twitter and find Rimini Street on Facebook and LinkedIn. (C-RMNI)

~ by Eric Helmer on April 28, 2018.

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