Hyundai-Kia expands Rimini Oracle contract to regional offices

Carmaker Hyundai-Kia Motors has expanded its third-party enterprise software support with Rimini Street to support Oracle Database software globally. The manufacturer replaced its Oracle support contract with Rimini Street Support in 2019, and said it increased the agreement based on the company’s high satisfaction with Rimini Street’s support services and the positive impact it has made to its business.

“We decided to expand Rimini Street’s ultra-responsive support to our affiliates and offices globally to continue to reduce costs and free up our IT personnel in those locations to focus on more strategic initiatives within the business,” said Hee-gon Kim, head of the cloud technology team at Hyundai-Kia Motors.

“We can use the resources saved to develop advanced technical innovations such as autonomous driving and electric vehicle development, which fuels our growth in the competitive automobile manufacturing market.”

Through the contract, Hyundai-Kia Motors said it would be expanding the use of Rimini Street Support globally to 20 of its group affiliates and offices – located in the United States, South America, Europe and the Middle East.

In December 2019, analyst Gartner warned IT decision makers that each year, support costs for legacy software increase, while the benefits gained from that support decrease. This has led to more organisations looking at the option of switching to a lower-cost third-party support option. In Gartner’s Predicts 2020: Negotiate software and cloud contracts, the analyst firm predicted that the third-party software support market will grow from $351m in 2019 to $1.05bn by 2023 – a 200% increase.

In the report, Gartner analyst and senior director Rob Wilkes wrote: “For many, third-party support is no longer seen as out of the ordinary or as carrying more than an acceptable risk. More buyers are aware of the value-added offerings from third-party support providers, such as custom-code support, interoperability support, and global tax, regulatory and security services.”

As Computer Weekly has previously reported, Oracle sometimes uses the threat of an audit and other tactics to push reluctant customers toward Oracle Cloud. According to Wilkes this approach has also inadvertently caused IT decision makers to increasingly evaluate third-party support for Oracle licenses that they want to leave on-premise.

He said that a key benefit of third-party support is that it allows customers to use the savings (of at least 50% in costs) to fund digital transformation projects that they were unable to achieve while stuck in an ever-increasing support cycle.

With the time, costs and resources saved by switching to Rimini Street Support, Hyundai-Kia Motors said it was able to reinvest the money it had saved to fund new innovation projects. These include autonomous driving and vehicle connectivity and electric vehicles.

“Our team now receives more responsive support by experts in our specific Oracle Database deployment,” said Kim. “We are delighted with the quality of technical support from our team of Primary Support Engineers compared to the software supplier.”