Spinnaker Nabs Former Rimini Executive

March 5, 2013 Alex Woodie

In the third-party maintenance business, we’re accustomed to hearing about Oracle and SAP losing maintenance and support business to the third-party providers. Today, Spinnaker Support is expected to announce that it has hired a key executive away from its primary competitor, Rimini Street.

Nigel Pullan is an ERP industry veteran with more than 30 years of experience with various companies, including 10 years at JD Edwards, where he was senior vice president and general manager for its EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) operations. Pullan was also at TomorrowNow, the now-defunct pioneer in third-party maintenance services founded by Seth Ravin, when TomorrowNow launched its JD Edwards support practice in 2005.

Ravin, of course, went on to found Rimini Street following the chaotic imploding of TomorrowNow, which admitted to Oracle’s accusations that it illegally downloaded support documents from Oracle. Once Ravin had Rimini up and running, he rehired Pullan to head up its EMEA business in the summer of 2010.

Hired in February, Pullan is now settling into his familiar position as vice president of EMEA, but for Spinnaker. “As you can imagine, this is a huge appointment for Spinnaker Support,” says Matthew Stava, managing principal of Spinnaker Support. “Nigel started the international operations for Rimini and he will be using that experience to help grow our market share in Europe.”

Stava used the occasion of nabbing an industry veteran from his closest competitor to wonder aloud about the state of Rimini, which has more than three times as many customers (550-plus) as Spinnaker (170-plus). “In a time when Rimini Street is posting news about record revenues and a pending IPO, why would one of their senior executives decide to leave?” Stava says in an email.

Pullan said he joined Spinnaker for two reasons: the “breadth of the strategic co-sourcing services” that Spinnaker offers, and its “business ethics and positive reputation within the third-party services ecosystem.” Terms of Pullan’s contract, including compensation, were not disclosed, but it’s possible that it may also have had something to do with his decision to join Spinnaker.