Rimini Street: how third-party software support became a broader enterprise services business
Rimini Street built its business around a question large organisations have faced for years: how long should an enterprise keep paying a software vendor for support once a system is stable and deeply embedded in the business?
Seth Ravin founded Rimini Street in 2005 to provide independent support for mature enterprise applications. The original pitch was straightforward. Customers could keep running important systems while buying support outside the original software vendor’s maintenance programme.
Two decades later, that idea still sits at the centre of Rimini Street. What changed is the breadth of the business. Support remains the foundation, but the company now also sells managed services, consulting and newer automation tools intended to help customers extend the life of existing enterprise software while modernising around it.
Rimini Street started with the economics of maintenance
Large enterprise systems are expensive to replace. Once finance, human resources, supply chain and customer processes depend on a platform, changing it can become a multi-year project involving data migration, integrations, retraining and operational risk.
Rimini Street entered the market by arguing that some customers did not need to follow every vendor upgrade cycle. Instead, they could continue using stable software while purchasing independent support for fixes, tax and regulatory updates, and operational issues.
That proposition appealed most strongly to organisations that wanted to keep mature systems running while redirecting budget elsewhere. It also created a business model built around long customer relationships rather than one-off projects.
The company expanded beyond support
As Rimini Street grew, the company added services around the applications it already supported. Managed services became an important extension because customers often wanted help operating systems, not only fixing them when something broke.
The portfolio eventually widened to include consulting, interoperability work and services around enterprise platforms. That broadened the commercial relationship without changing the core logic of the business.
Rimini Street still makes its strongest case when a customer wants to keep an existing enterprise system useful for longer. The newer services are designed to sit around that installed base rather than force an immediate replacement.
The 2017 public listing brought more scrutiny
Rimini Street became publicly traded in 2017 through a business combination. Its shares trade on Nasdaq under the ticker RMNI.
Public-company reporting made the economics of the model easier to follow. Investors could see recurring revenue, active-client numbers, retention and the effect of litigation costs on the business.
That last point became especially important because Rimini Street’s history is closely tied to long-running litigation with Oracle over the way support services were delivered.
The Oracle litigation became part of the company story
Rimini Street and Oracle spent years in litigation involving software support practices and intellectual-property boundaries. The disputes produced court rulings, injunctions, legal costs and operational changes that materially affected Rimini Street.
In July 2024, Rimini Street announced that it would wind down support and services for Oracle PeopleSoft products. At the time, the company said that work represented about $30 million in annual revenue.
A broader settlement followed in July 2025. Under that agreement, Rimini Street must complete the PeopleSoft wind-down no later than 31 July 2028. The agreement also created a litigation standstill covering specified matters while the wind-down proceeds.
The settlement states that no party admits liability or wrongdoing. The Rimini II case was stayed and administratively closed by the court in July 2025, subject to the terms of the agreement.
This is not a side issue in the company’s history. The PeopleSoft wind-down removes revenue from a product area that once contributed meaningfully to Rimini Street, while the settlement gives management a clearer framework for operating the rest of the business.
The business model depends on recurring relationships
Enterprise support is most valuable when customers trust the provider to remain available for years. Rimini Street therefore pays close attention to annualised recurring revenue, retention and remaining performance obligations.
At the end of the second quarter of 2026, the company reported adjusted annualised recurring revenue of $401.1 million, up 8.1% from a year earlier. Remaining performance obligations reached $636.9 million, also higher year over year.
Active clients stood at 3,132 at the end of June 2026, compared with 3,060 a year earlier. Revenue retention remained at 90% for the trailing 12 months.
Those figures show why recurring support remains central. Rimini Street is not built around a single product launch. Its economics depend on keeping customers, expanding services inside existing accounts and replacing revenue that disappears when contracts or product lines end.
Revenue returned to growth in 2026
Rimini Street reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $111.1 million, up 6.7% from the same period a year earlier. The company also reported adjusted revenue of $108 million after excluding the effect of the PeopleSoft wind-down, representing 10% year-on-year growth.
The result followed a period in which management had been trying to improve sales execution while reducing the drag from the discontinued PeopleSoft business.
Adjusted EBITDA and non-GAAP profit measures still moved from quarter to quarter, but the stronger recurring-revenue figures suggested that the broader support and services portfolio was gaining traction.
Managed services are becoming a larger part of the pitch
Independent support solves one problem: keeping established enterprise software running. Managed services address another: who handles the day-to-day work around that software.
Rimini Street has increasingly positioned itself as a provider that can support, operate and optimise enterprise applications rather than simply answer support tickets. That widens the potential contract while also placing more responsibility on the company.
A customer that hands over managed operations expects reliability, security and continuity. The relationship becomes harder to replace, but the service provider also has less room for error.
AI is being added around existing systems
Rimini Street has also begun promoting agentic AI and automation as part of its enterprise-services strategy. The important point is not the label itself, but where the technology fits.
Many Rimini Street customers run mature ERP and operational systems that they do not want to replace immediately. AI tools can therefore be more useful when they work around those systems, automate repetitive tasks or connect newer workflows to older software.
That gives Rimini Street a logical route into AI without requiring customers to abandon the systems the company already supports. Commercial value will still depend on whether those tools produce measurable improvements in production environments.
Rimini Street is selling time as much as support
The deepest part of Rimini Street’s business model is not simply cheaper maintenance. It is time.
A company that postpones a large enterprise-software migration can redirect capital and staff toward other projects. That can be attractive when the existing system still works and the replacement case is not yet compelling.
Rimini Street’s opportunity therefore grows when customers want more control over their upgrade timetable. The risk is that customers may eventually decide to replace the older platform entirely, removing the need for independent support.
The company has responded by expanding managed services and consulting so that it can remain relevant even as the customer’s technology estate changes.
The PeopleSoft wind-down is now part of the transition
By the first half of 2026, revenue from services provided solely for Oracle PeopleSoft products had fallen to about 3% of total revenue, compared with 6% a year earlier.
That decline is intentional. The company must complete the wind-down by July 2028 under the 2025 settlement.
The strategic test is whether growth elsewhere can more than replace the lost PeopleSoft business. Second-quarter 2026 results suggested that the broader portfolio was growing, but the transition still has to be managed over several years.
Rimini Street’s future depends on staying useful around old software
Rimini Street began by challenging the assumption that enterprise customers had to buy all long-term support from the original software vendor. That idea gave the company a distinctive market position and also placed it in years of legal conflict.
The business that exists in 2026 is broader than the one Seth Ravin founded in 2005. Support remains the anchor, but managed services, consulting and AI-enabled automation now sit around it.
The 2025 Oracle settlement and ongoing PeopleSoft wind-down have made the boundaries of the business clearer. At the same time, recurring revenue and active-client growth show that customers continue to buy the wider service model.
Rimini Street’s next chapter will depend on whether it can keep helping organisations extract more life from existing systems while those same organisations gradually modernise. The company does not need every customer to avoid change forever. It needs to remain useful while that change happens.
