Rimini Street Says Third Party Support Biz Is Booming

January 17, 2011 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Oracle‘s prevailing over SAP in a lawsuit regarding TomorrowNow, a provider of third-party support for PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards application suits, to the tune of $1.3 billion plus interest has apparently not diminished the financial prospects of Rimini Street, which is itself embroiled in a lawsuit with Oracle.

Rimini Street is not a public company, so it does not have to report its financial results. But in a statement released last week, the company said that it had over $7 million in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2010, its highest quarterly revenue to date and up 37 percent compared to the year-ago quarter. The company booked $47 million in contracts during the quarter (not all of which is recognized immediately because you need to spread services revenues out over the term of a contract). Those bookings were up 67 percent compared to a year ago. The company says it did more than 30 deals in Q4 and that it exited the year with a bookings backlog of $220 million, up 48 percent from the $149 million backlog a year ago.

That backlog is for very, very long contracts, by the way, if you are wondering about the huge spread between quarterly revenues and bookings. Rimini Street said that its average contract term is now 11 years, up from 9 years just 12 months ago. Rimini Street says it is seeing rising client retention rates, cresting above 95 percent as 2010 came to a close, and has client satisfaction rates above 99 percent. The company has 180 employees and nearly 400 customers using its support services around the globe

“Rimini Street continues to execute to its global business plan and is dedicated to providing the most innovative, cost-effective and most responsive enterprise software support in the industry,” explained Seth Ravin, chief executive officer at Rimini Street, in a statement accompanying the financial results. “Our record client contract renewal and satisfaction rates this year attest to our clients’ success with our industry-leading support model, ultra-responsive service and high-quality deliverables. We are pleased to end 2010 with a record quarter and record annual results; and we will continue to execute to our business plan in 2011 and work towards a potential IPO in 2012.”

Rimini Street, which was founded in 2005, has been offering support for SAP’s applications since 2009, and that business tripled last year. The company is working on setting up support operations for Oracle’s E-Business Suite, completing the popular stacks of Oracle software and surely antagonizing His Larryness to the point of throwing more money at lawyers. The E-Business Suite offering is expected sometime this year from Rimini Street; early customers are testing it now.