Oracle Support Strategy
Oracle charges 22% of license value annually for Premier Support. Rimini Street costs 50% less. But switching from Oracle Support is not a cost-only decision — it involves legal risk, support quality tradeoffs, and operational dependencies that many buyers don't fully understand.
Oracle Premier Support costs approximately 22% of your license list value every year. For a customer with $5M in Oracle licenses (at list price), that's $1.1M annually. For a customer with $10M in licenses, that's $2.2M yearly. These numbers don't decrease — if anything, Oracle's audit teams often find unlicensed usage, which increases your license base and, proportionally, your support bill.
What does this $1.1M–$2.2M buy you? In theory: 24/7 phone support, access to Oracle's customer support portal, security patch delivery, critical hotfix deployment, and access to Oracle's engineer community. In practice, Oracle's support is a gatekeeping function. You don't get architectural advice; you get tactical answers to specific questions. For anything that requires product expertise or requires changes to your environment, you're expected to hire system integrators or Oracle-trained consultants.
Oracle also uses support contracts to enforce other Oracle policies. If you're non-compliant with your license agreements, Oracle's support team will pressure you to purchase additional licenses before escalating technical issues. If you're negotiating an audit settlement, Oracle's support team becomes less responsive — they view you as an adversary in licensing negotiations, not a paying support customer.
Rimini Street provides third-party support for Oracle products at approximately 9–11% of your license list value annually. For the same $5M license base, that's $450K–$550K/year. The savings: $550K–$650K yearly. Over a 5-year period, you're saving $2.75M–$3.25M.
Rimini Street's business model is built on undercutting Oracle's support costs while maintaining service quality. They employ ex-Oracle support engineers, maintain patch repositories, and offer support response times that are competitive with Oracle's SLAs. Their turnaround times for critical issues are typically 4–8 hours, compared to Oracle's 4-hour SLA for Severe issues.
However, Rimini Street is not Oracle. They don't have access to Oracle's internal source code, internal patch repository, or development teams. They maintain patches independently, which means there's typically a 30–60 day lag between Oracle's security releases and Rimini Street's availability. For most organizations, this lag is acceptable. For environments with zero-day exposure requirements or regulatory mandates for immediate patching, it's a problem.
Oracle Support (22% annually): $5M license base = $1.1M/year = $5.5M over 5 years
Rimini Street (10% annually): $5M license base = $500K/year = $2.5M over 5 years
Total savings: $3M over 5 years
But this assumes you maintain the same license base. Most organizations don't — they acquire new licenses, expand their database estates, or undertake cloud migrations.
| Factor | Oracle Premier Support | Rimini Street |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Cost (% of license value) | 22% | 9–11% |
| Typical 5-year cost ($5M license base) | $5.5M | $2.5M |
| Critical issue response SLA | 4 hours | 4–8 hours |
| Patch delivery lag | Same day (security patches) | 30–60 days |
| Access to Oracle patch portal | Yes | No — independent patch distribution |
| Support for custom configurations | Yes (engineering escalation) | Yes (with limitations) |
| Cloud Credits (Support Rewards) | Yes (~3% annual rebate to OCI) | No |
| Oracle Engineering escalation | Yes | No — escalates to Rimini Street engineers only |
| Product certifications maintained | Yes | Void — Oracle may not honor certifications |
| Legal risk (using without Oracle licenses) | None | High — Oracle has sued third-party support users |
| Contract restrictions | Tied to Oracle ULA/CSI | Independent contract with Rimini Street |
| Flexibility to move back to Oracle | N/A | Oracle may require 1+ years of back-support costs |
Cost savings are compelling, but switching from Oracle Support is not a purely financial decision. You lose several advantages that, depending on your environment, could be critical.
Oracle releases security patches immediately when vulnerabilities are discovered. Rimini Street typically has a 30–60 day lag. This lag is driven by Rimini Street's process: they need to obtain the patch, test it in their environment, integrate it with their support infrastructure, and validate it independently. For most organizations, this lag is acceptable. For highly exposed systems (public-facing databases, payment processing systems, regulatory-critical environments), immediate patch access is worth Oracle's support costs.
Oracle's Support Rewards program provides annual credits toward Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) spend, typically valued at 3–5% of your annual support costs. For a customer paying $1M in support, that's $30K–$50K in annual cloud credits. This is a subtle Oracle strategy: they use cloud credits to lock you into OCI, which then requires additional Oracle Database licenses, which increases your support bills. When you switch to Rimini Street, you lose these credits entirely. For organizations actively using OCI, this is a hidden cost of switching.
When you face a problem that requires deep product expertise, Oracle Support can escalate to Oracle's engineering teams — the people who built the code. Rimini Street engineers are experts, but they're not Oracle's creators. For obscure bugs, undocumented features, or complex architectural questions, Oracle's engineering access is valuable. Rimini Street has mitigated this by hiring ex-Oracle engineers, but the distinction matters for highly customized environments.
When you use third-party support, Oracle may not honor its product certifications (Exadata, database appliances, certified configurations). This is Oracle's way of pressuring customers back to Oracle Support. In practice, most organizations don't lose certifications, but it's contractually possible and creates risk.
Oracle has a documented history of litigating against Rimini Street and third-party support users. Between 2010 and 2018, Oracle sued Rimini Street multiple times over copyright and support contract violations. While recent legal decisions have become more favorable to third-party support (especially when customers own Oracle licenses), Oracle's legal position remains aggressive. Using Rimini Street without owning Oracle licenses is explicitly a copyright infringement risk — Oracle does not grant support rights to non-licensees, and Rimini Street cannot provide them.
However, if you own Oracle licenses, the risk is lower. You've paid for the software; you're simply choosing a different support provider. Oracle's legal leverage is reduced when you're a license owner. That said, Oracle's support contracts often include language that claims Oracle support is required to maintain compliance, and using third-party support may technically violate that language.
This is the hidden cost most customers don't understand: Oracle's Enterprise Agreements typically require that you maintain Oracle Support to maintain license compliance and certification. This language varies by contract, but the intent is consistent — Oracle uses support contracts as a compliance enforcement mechanism.
When you switch from Oracle Support to Rimini Street, you're technically in violation of this contractual requirement. Oracle knows this, and they use it as leverage. If Oracle audits you while you're using Rimini Street support, they can claim that you're non-compliant with your contract and demand you either purchase back-support costs or face increased settlement demands. This is not theoretical — it happens regularly in Oracle settlements.
The negotiation works like this: Oracle finds a compliance gap during an audit (which they will find — every environment has something). Instead of settling at, say, $1M, Oracle argues that your use of third-party support constitutes contractual non-compliance, adding an additional settlement demand of $500K–$1M. You're now arguing about compliance, not support quality. To avoid this leverage, many customers maintain Oracle Support for at least the "at-risk" period immediately before or during an anticipated audit.
Switching to Rimini Street is right for you if all of the following are true:
Switching is risky for you if:
The optimal time to switch to Rimini Street is immediately after an Oracle audit settles. At that point, Oracle's leverage is exhausted — they've already negotiated their settlement. You can then switch to Rimini Street, run for 3–5 years at lower cost, and switch back to Oracle (or at least maintain Oracle support again) when the next audit cycle approaches. This strategy is used by sophisticated buyers to extract the cost savings of Rimini Street while managing Oracle's audit and support leverage. However, it requires 5+ year visibility into your audit cycle, which most organizations don't have.
Oracle Support is expensive, and Oracle knows it. When you're negotiating an Oracle agreement renewal or contract restructuring, threatening to switch to Rimini Street is a legitimate negotiating tactic. Oracle's account teams are motivated to prevent customer defection, and they have flexibility in support pricing that they won't volunteer unless you force the conversation.
Here's how it works: In your Oracle agreement renewal conversation, you present Oracle with Rimini Street's pricing and ask Oracle to match it — or come close. Oracle's typical response is "we can't match Rimini Street pricing," but they can often offer 20–30% discounts on support if they believe you're serious about switching. You can negotiate support down from 22% to 15–17% of license value if you've done your homework and presented a credible Rimini Street alternative.
This negotiation only works if Oracle believes you'll actually switch. Casual threats don't work. You need to prepare a detailed Rimini Street transition plan, understand your environment's compatibility with Rimini Street support, and demonstrate executive buy-in for a switch. Then, Oracle's account team has to justify to their management why they lost a customer to Rimini Street when they could have discounted support.
Oracle is aggressively pushing customers toward Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and away from on-premises Oracle Database. When you migrate to OCI, support dynamics change. Oracle no longer provides traditional Premier Support for databases hosted on OCI — instead, they bundle support into OCI instance pricing. This means support costs are harder to negotiate separately, and Oracle's pricing becomes more opaque.
Rimini Street has limited presence in OCI support. If you're migrating to OCI, you may have no choice but to maintain Oracle support, at least for your cloud-hosted databases. This is a strategic advantage Oracle has built into their cloud pricing — they've made switching to Rimini Street less viable for cloud customers.
For customers who plan to migrate significant workloads to OCI over the next 3–5 years, the Rimini Street analysis becomes less relevant. Your support costs will be driven by OCI subscription costs, not traditional Premier Support. However, for your remaining on-premises Oracle Database environment, Rimini Street remains a viable cost-reduction option.
This is the critical first question. If you own your licenses (purchased under a perpetual license model or Oracle agreement), you have more flexibility with third-party support. If you're using a ULA, your license ownership is ambiguous — you own the right to use unlimited Oracle software, but you don't own specific licenses. Switching to Rimini Street under a ULA is riskier because Oracle can argue that your third-party support use violates your ULA terms. Clarify your license ownership before committing to a Rimini Street switch.
If an audit is likely within 12–24 months, maintaining Oracle Support is strategically wise. Oracle's support teams will be less cooperative if they know you're using Rimini Street, and an audit will almost certainly include questions about your support contract. If you have 3+ years before an anticipated audit, Rimini Street becomes more attractive.
Calculate the exact number. For a $5M license base, the difference is $3M. For a $50M license base, it's $30M. If the savings don't exceed $1M–$2M over five years, the operational risk may not be worth the savings. If the savings exceed $5M, it almost certainly is.
If you're subject to PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOX, or other frameworks that mandate rapid security patching, Rimini Street's 30–60 day lag may violate your compliance requirements. Check your specific regulatory obligations before switching.
If you're actively using OCI and Support Rewards credits, the cost savings of Rimini Street are partially offset by lost cloud credits. Calculate the total credit value before deciding. If you're not using OCI, this is moot.
Oracle's support costs are genuinely excessive — 22% of license value annually is designed to lock customers into perpetual payment. Rimini Street's 50% discount is real and can save large customers millions of dollars. However, switching is not a simple binary decision. It involves legal risk, operational dependencies, and strategic timing.
For customers who are:
Rimini Street is a compelling cost-reduction strategy. For others, maintaining Oracle Support — or at least negotiating aggressive Oracle Support discounts using Rimini Street as leverage — is the safer path.
The key principle: Don't let Oracle force you to pay full support pricing for a service you may not need. Use Rimini Street's existence as leverage to negotiate Oracle discounts, even if you never actually switch.
We help enterprise buyers assess whether Rimini Street makes sense for their environment, negotiate Oracle Support discounts, or structure a Rimini Street transition that minimises audit and operational risk.
Explore Support Reduction Services →Oracle charges approximately 22% of your license list value annually for Premier Support. Rimini Street typically charges 50% less, around 9–11% of license value. For a $5M Oracle license base, Oracle costs ~$1.1M/year; Rimini Street costs ~$450K–$550K/year. Savings typically exceed $500K for mid-market customers and $2M+ for enterprises.
Yes. When you leave Oracle Support, you lose direct access to Oracle's support portal, patch delivery mechanisms, and security patch feeds. However, Rimini Street provides patches independently, delivered through their own infrastructure. The patch lag is typically 30–60 days behind Oracle, which is acceptable for most production environments but problematic for zero-day exploits.
Oracle has a documented history of aggressively pursuing customers using third-party support providers. Oracle sued Rimini Street multiple times (2010–2018) over copyright and breach of contract. While recent cases have favored more lenient treatment of third-party support, Oracle's legal position remains that using Rimini Street services without owning Oracle licenses is a breach. Owning licenses mitigates this risk significantly.
You lose: direct Oracle patch access, Oracle product certifications, cloud credits (via Support Rewards), guaranteed SLAs for security issues, access to Oracle's support portal, direct engineer escalation, and Oracle's legal liability for support quality. Rimini Street provides equivalent coverage for most issues but operates independently from Oracle's infrastructure.
For most mission-critical environments, yes—with caveats. Rimini Street has strong database expertise and turnaround times competitive with Oracle. However, their response to zero-day exploits or uncommon configuration issues may be slower. Your risk profile matters: highly customized environments benefit from Oracle's broader expertise; standard deployments work well with Rimini Street.
We publish weekly insights on Oracle audit trends, licensing changes, and defense strategies. Subscribe for expert guidance delivered to your inbox.
Free Research
Download our Oracle OCI Licensing Guide — expert analysis from former Oracle insiders, 100% buyer-side.
Download the OCI Licensing Guide →