This isn’t a new thing – Rimini Street has always supported customized code, and CEO Seth Ravin said it has become one of the major selling points. Why? Because Oracle Support will not support customized code. Why they won’t do it is not entirely certain, but Ravin has his ideas on it.

“The only way you can drive 92% gross margins is to provide as little support as possible,” Ravin said, referring to the profit margins Oracle gets on its licensing and support services.

It’s clear that Oracle wants to protect its support revenue – it is in the midst of a lawsuit claiming that Rimini Street infringed on Oracle’s intellectual property by supporting Oracle customers. Oracle is also suing CedarCrestone, another third-party Oracle support provider. At the same time, Oracle has recently come out with its Platinum Services product, a high-end support offering for customers running its engineered systems.

During a keynote Monday morning, Oracle President Mark Hurd talked about the Platinum Services promise of a 5-minute response time, adding that sometimes the response to a problem could be “in nanoseconds.”

Platinum Services promises higher support quality, but only for Oracle customers running so-called Platinum products: Exadata, Exalogic and Sparc Supercluster with Exadata, ZFS or Pillar Axiom 600 storage.

Ravin said that’s exactly the point – if you want to get good support from Oracle, you have to spend millions in their engineered systems to get it. But still, he added, Oracle Support will not support customized code.

Currently about half of Rimini Street’s customer base is running PeopleSoft, with another 30% running SAP applications. Rimini’s target is to eventually have about half SAP, one-quarter E-Business Suite, and the rest a mix of PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel. They say this is the company’s projection because the SAP and EBS businesses are growing so quickly. The company also announced on Monday that it will begin supporting Oracle Hyperion as well.

Quick refresher, as this case has been going on for a very, very long time: way back in the late 90′s, TomorrowNow started as a company that specialized in upgrading and providing technical services to PeopleSoft systems. In 2002 they branched out to provide third party support for various kinds of enterprise software, including both PeopleSoft and JD Edwards. TomorrowNow was purchased by SAP in 2005; PeopleSoft was purchased by Oracle the same year.

In 2007, Oracle slapped SAP with a lawsuit accusing them of “corporate theft on a grand scale” due to TomorrowNow having downloaded thousands of documents and programs from Oracle’s Customer Connection technical support website using logins of Oracle customers whose support contracts had either already expired or were about to.

SAP briefly tried to argue that TomorrowNow had been entitled to download the materials as they had been contracted to perform third party support; that didn’t last long. In the end, it came down to TomorrowNow being pretty obviously in the wrong and the only question being how many millions were owed to Oracle– Oracle claimed it was billions, not millions, using the argument that each of the clients who employed TomorrowNow’s services would otherwise have employed Oracle Support. At one point, a judge awarded Oracle $1.3 billion, but another judge threw that verdict out.

That Oracle would get a quick admission of guilt and willingness to bargain was not at all a forgone conclusion. To see a very different outcome, take a look Oracle’s lawsuit on another third party support firm, Rimini Street. Interesting side note: Rimini Street CEO Seth Ravin was a founder of TomorrowNow. Hmmmm.

SAP has agreed to pay the $306 million, hoping to avoid yet another trial. Oracle says that agreement only paves the way for an appeal. What do we here at Eye on Oracle have to say about this decision? Well, At least Oracle’s winnings come close to matching their losses in the HP trial. At this rate, they might just break even…

A recent report by analyst Rob Enderle calls Oracle a “parasitic” vendor “that is focused on products and selling and the best managed, and has instrumented everything but the customer.” Enderle’s report followed the recent survey results from Gabriel Consulting Group that Oracle customers’ loyalty may be waning.

Enderle listed three major factors that he feels are warning signs.

First, he cited a warning related to hardware prices. Over the last year, Oracle has altered its processor core factor table, a document that helps determine licensing costs for different processor types. Generally speaking, Oracle reduced the licensing factors for some Oracle (previously Sun) hardware while increasing the factors for some competitors. Bottom line: It might cost you more to run Oracle on competing hardware. In addition, Oracle announced that it would no longer support software development for Intel Itanium, the main processor used in HP Unix servers. IT users in general were not pleased.

It seems like this was a case of Oracle taking it too far. Changing its processor core factor table caused some grumblings in the back channel, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Oracle acquired a hardware company, and it’s not surprising that its own sales and policies would favor its own products.

But the dropping of Itanium support was a bigger deal. It was bigger than I initially thought it was. After all, I figured, Itanium has long been called the Itanic. Ever since it failed to become the all-encompassing processor that Intel initially hoped it would be, everyone has been waiting for it to go away completely. But the way Oracle handled the situation – saying in a press release that Itanium was nearing its end of life when executives from HP and Intel have vociferously denied it – has some end users wondering what platform is the next one that Oracle won’t support. One of Oracle Database’s claims to fame in the beginning was its portability to multiple platforms. Now there is a concern that Oracle is getting away from that. I’m not sure how well founded that concern is, but there is no doubt it is a concern. A recent IT user survey, 95% of which were Oracle customers, found that about half think Oracle wants to reduce the amount of platforms it supports.

The second sign Enderle points to is Oracle’s hostile virtualization policy toward VMware. I think this is something of an outdated criticism, however, or at least it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be. This month Enderle criticized Oracle’s policies of running Oracle on VMware. Unfortunately, to help prove his point he linked to 2009 post from the blog of Chuck Hollis, an EMC marketing VP. The truth is that, yes, Oracle would rather all its customers run Oracle VM as their virtualization hypervisor. But it has made strides in better supporting Oracle on VMware. Last year it announced that it would support Oracle RAC on VMware, which it previously would not do. Unfortunately, Oracle’s VMware support policy is like Jekyll and Hyde, with support personnel willing to help but sales reps looking to scare people off VMware. The result? Customer confusion. And that’s not a good thing.

Finallly, Enderle points to the “revolving door on CFOs” at Oracle. Enderle is spot-on there. The Oracle CFO position has seen significant turnover in the last decade. Jeff Henley, Harry You, Greg Maffei, Safra Catz, Jeff Epstein and now Catz again is how it’s gone. Enderle thinks this may be a warning sign that Oracle’s financial picture might not be as rosy as it paints during every quarterly earnings call. Typically speaking it’s not a good sign when a CFO resigns without reason, as Epstein recently did, but as of now it’s all speculation. But it is certainly something to keep an eye out on.

Some major modules of E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards are in this boat. From the story:

Support deadlines have been a hot topic among members of the Oracle Applications Users Group (OAUG), and will surely also be at the group’s Collaborate 11 conference in April, said John Schmitz, who serves on the organization’s Customer Support Council.

Users have “a lot of concern” about the cost and complexity of upgrades, said Schmitz, who is also an E-Business Suite project leader at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s IT department. “I think they’d welcome all the help they can get.”

Oracle recently made a “big step forward” in this direction with the release of a number of detailed guides that walk customers through specific upgrade processes, Schmitz said.

Also check out SearchOracle.com’s recent story on whether the phrase Oracle Support is an oxymoron, and readers’ reactions to that story.

According to a recent survey, 42% of Oracle application customers are dissatisfied with the quality of support. In another survey, satisfaction levels with Oracle Support are far below those for other major vendors. Oracle shops told of filing service requests and not getting timely responses, or getting poor responses.

Some of these shops are paying Oracle six or seven figures for support services, and don’t feel they are getting what they are paying for. That said, maybe some of you out there are perfectly content with Oracle Support. Maybe you could tell us a story or two about how responsive Oracle Support was in your case.

Whatever your situation, let us know in the comments. Thanks.

Oracle customers have long lamented the software giant’s 22% annual fees for maintenance and support.  But even as users move to third-party support, pursue negotiations and opt out of paying maintenance entirely, Oracle has stood its ground on what CEO Larry Ellison calls its most profitable business.

Ray Wang has voiced his concern about these “all or nothing” maintenance agreements that require customers to put every license on an upgrade track. Wang released his own Enterprise Software Licensee’s Bill of Rights, which he recommended enterprises use when negotiating contracts. Now, Gartner is following suit with its own maintenance guidelines for software vendors.

This week, it issued a document and formed a new advocacy council, Gartner Global IT Council for IT Maintenance, around the issue.  Its new code of conduct will serve to correct imbalances between the value customers receive for maintenance fees and the revenue they provide vendors, Gartner said.

Some clauses of the code include a right to regular, predictable updates to software products; fair percentage ranges for annual maintenance fee hikes; and clearly spelled-out support time lines for older releases.

The council hopes the code of conduct will act as a starting point for discussion and later become an industry standard.

But would vendors like Oracle – who have gone as far to sue third party support providers – really follow something like this? And as others in the know have questioned – what stick does Gartner have to make them do so?

This is a question analyst Vinnie Mirchandani addressed in a recent blog post on the global IT council.

“I would love to see Gartner put some teeth behind this code. Have the guts to call out IBM, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft and others as they violate those principles,” he wrote.

New research findings from Rimini Street help validate something that Oracle will not be happy to hear: Oracle customers who use third-party support experience ongoing savings, both in terms of material cost and organizational efficiency.

The third-party support provider recently conducted an independent research project with Nucleus Research that compared Rimini Street support to software vendor annual support.  The resulting report, “Benefits from Third-Party Support: Rimini Street,” highlighted how Rimini Street gives customers benefits such as improved support and reduced upgrade costs.

This seems to be something the majority of customers already know. In March, a report from analyst Ray Wang revealed a 113.8% increase in interest in third-party support from Q3 2009 to Q1 2010, with Oracle users expressing the most interest in it.

The Rimini Street study, however, included specific candid responses from Rimini Street customers about their experiences with third-party support, such as:

“”We were paying $2,750,000 and now we’re paying $750,000, so we save about $2 million.”

But if Oracle is worried about losing its customers to third-party support, could they simply lower their 22% annual fees?  This is something many users wonder — especially when they don’t feel they are getting what they pay for — but with Oracle reporting a 90% profit margin on maintenance services, it seems unlikely.

Oracle’s support policies are not changing with the Sun acquisition, either.  The software giant announced in March that it was clamping down on Sun support contracts, requiring Sun customers to get their contracts in order with Oracle for their hardware.  One customer admitted that Sun’s service pricing model was “horrible,” but wasn’t sure if Oracle’s would be any better.

In his view, Oracle’s approach looks to be easier to administer but (and this is a big, bad but), customers may not care how easy it is if their support costs go through the roof.

How far will Oracle continue to go to weed out third-party support providers? And how far will customers go to continue to seek them out?

Using a third-party maintenance and support vendor can be a smart decision for some Oracle customers given those customers can expect better service, a significant reduction in fees and more flexible maintenance policies.

Naturally, Oracle hates this.

In January the software giant sued third-party support provider Rimini Street for intellectual property theft, claiming that the company and CEO Seth Ravin are responsible for “massive theft of Oracle’s software and related support materials.” It also accused Rimini Street of alleged copyright infringement, fraud, breach of contract and unfair competition.

Two years earlier, Oracle made TomorrowNow the target of a similar lawsuit, in which the software giant made numerous allegations – including committing “corporate theft on a grand scale” and stealing software products — against the SAP-owned third-party support provider, some of which SAP admitted to.

But as Oracle turns against third-party maintenance providers, more and more users are turning toward them.  In a new report from Altimeter Group analyst Ray Wang, interest in third-party maintenance services are shown to have increased by 113.8% from Q3 2009 to Q1 2010.

So what’s causing such a surge?

According to Wang, survey results show that high costs (Oracle charges 22% annual fees) and reduced budgets are the biggest culprits, but other contributing factors include customers disliking the vendor, poor service and feeling they are not getting enough value for their money. Also, 30% of respondents reported delivering their own support, having no need to pay for outside maintenance.

In Oracle‘s defense, it has good reason to be concerned with protecting its intellectual property. Wang’s survey showed that the vendor had the highest percentage (88.1%) of users who expressed interest in seeking third-party support with SAP coming in second at 76.2%.

But how will Oracle’s legal battles with third-party providers affect not only the companies they put under fire, but their own customers?

In his article “ERP Support: How far will Oracle go to protect the golden egg?” Thomas Wailgum wonders if continued litigation by Oracle will discourage competition, giving customers little choice but to stick with Oracle for support at a time when, as Wang points out, they already have few options.

If Oracle has reasons other than simply protecting its $3 billion in profits from maintenance and support to file lawsuits and providers are actually breaking laws, Oracle should protect its rights. But customers have rights as well, and third-party enterprise support is entirely legal.

Wang is encouraging users to band together and take action.  ”Users and user groups must vigorously defend their positions in contracts and legal action or lose this right.  Failure will result in a continued software maintenance monopoly. Success will ensure market competition and renewed innovation.” he writes.

Do you use third-party support? Why or why not? Do you feel like you have enough third-party maintenance options? Do you think Oracle has gone too far in going against providers of third-party support?  If you have any answers or opinions to these questions we would like to hear from you.

“Fiasco” and “unmitigated disaster” were words used to describe My Oracle Support when Oracle revealed the new support portal to replace Metalink last November.

Does this sound like the same company that claims it will be offering Sun customers “the highest level of customer service” once the acquisition is finalized?

Well no, but it is. And while it could be a valid claim, if the complaints of aggravated users have been resolved, it seems like My Oracle Support is still the cause of many frustrations.

Oracle has taken measures to reach out to its customers regarding this issue. For example, Oracle’s Chris Warticki, who writes Oracle’s Support blog, has offered resources such as an FAQ for My Oracle Support migration and Oracle Support best practices.

However, for many users this isn’t enough, as even simple tasks like logging into the support portal still seem to be an issue.  PC World recently reported that problems were hitting My Oracle Support again, with an “intermittent login issue” on the site. Warticki recommended solutions in his latest blog post, but this hardly seemed to ease users’ frustrations, with many leaving comments expressing their anger:

“If the MOS is DOWN ???? Should not be an option in 2010 from a company which is making money from selling High Availability.”

“Turn Metalink back on. It’s that simple!!!!… I am furious about this and even more furious that Oracle simply doesn’t listen to its customers and acts like they know what’s best for them.”

“I would like some answers and some firm dates on the outages and the bugs instead of some hapless drone reading from a prepared script.”

This isn’t the first time since November that users have had a login problem, which remains an ongoing issue.  Many comments continued to be left on Warticki’s FAQ blog post through December. Likewise, his January post on best practices in the new year was also not well received. One customer summing up the thoughts of many users well:

“Enough is enough. If you truly want to ‘resolve the issues as quickly as possible’, there is no easier and quicker fix than bringing back Metalink and taking this thing back to the testing pit.”

If you had problems with My Oracle Support in November, have they improved at all since? Do you think these issues have been overblown by some users?  Do you think Oracle is not doing enough to fix these problems, and will the Sun acquisition cause even more?  Let us know what you think.

There have been, however, glimpses of hope. Last year, Oracle received high marks for support in a survey from the UK Oracle Users Group (UKOUG). The software giant also announced the release of My Oracle Support, a new next-generation user support portal to replace Metalink, at last year’s Oracle OpenWorld.  And just last week, Oracle upgraded My Oracle Support and officially retired the Classic Metalink allowing even more users to switch over to the new portal.

But it looks like that’s where the good news ends.

Users are calling the new user support portal a fiasco, according to a ComputerWorld article by Chris Kanaracus this week. Complaints from customers about “severe problems” in My Oracle Support include a Flash interface that’s often not compatible, unhelpful tech support and the inability to simply log into the portal.

How has Oracle responded to the complaints?

The vendor has not yet provided a status update. In a blog post Monday, Oracle’s Chris Warticki emphasized that Metalink could no longer be used.  “Please register. Change is here. Get in front of this one…seriously,” Warticki wrote about My Oracle Support.

As of Wednesday afternoon 39 users, most of whom could not log in, had commented on the post, writing complaints including:

“This is an unmitigated disaster. MOS is not working for our company. It is not working for DBAs at two other companies I have asked, either. When I get through to support by phone, they tell me that they can’t help me because they can’t use the new system either.”

“Why, with all of Oracle’s software acquisitions, holdings, and developers, was Oracle unable to create a new support site with Oracle software?… If Uncle Larry hears of this fiasco, it sure seems that heads will roll, but hey, at least the interface (that always freezes) is pretty to look at.”

“I am really curious why Oracle thinks anyone wants flash on what is supposed to be a support site? I just want my sr’s resolved in a timely manner, and usable information. Right now we have neither.”

Warticki responded to the comments a few times, apologizing for the frustration and saying that Oracle would fix the issues: “Our apologies for any inconvenience as Support works out any ‘glitches’. Hang on. Remain on hold. We’ll be right with you,” he wrote in his latest comment

But is this just an issue that needs a few days to sort out, or is the future of Oracle support doomed?