In the Long Run, Partnering (not Undercutting) Drives the Most Value for Customers

The copyright infringement battle between software giant Oracle and third-party maintenance (TPM) provider Rimini Street has gone on for more than a decade and appears to have finally ended with multiple court findings against Rimini Street. 

The case and its lessons should be on the radar for any data center manager or IT executive who deals with multiple service providers to keep their technology assets running smoothly and efficiently after their initial warranties expire.

The most recent blow came in a January finding that held Rimini in contempt of court for willfully and repeatedly violating a 2018 permanent injunction to stop violating Oracle’s intellectual property rights. That followed a 2015 ruling that Rimini infringed on Oracle’s copyrights by illegally copying and sharing software code without a proper license

Oracle, like other developers of software or hardware technology, has invested decades in its intellectual property. It sells licenses to use these products to thousands and thousands of organizations around the world. When the initial support agreement is set to expire, a customer can choose to extend its contract with Oracle or bring in another provider of those services, typically at a lower cost -- perhaps a TPM such as Rimini Street, or often a multi-vendor services (MVS) provider like CDS. 

In the third-party support business, there are honorable companies that respect the intellectual property of OEM providers and, rather than competing, partner with the Oracles or IBMs or Dells of the world to ensure they are certified and accepted to support those products. This is the approach we take at CDS, and it’s why we are trusted by data center managers and OEMs wherever we do business.   

According to Oracle’s website, “A court found that Rimini Street built its business on infringement and misuse of Oracle software and that Rimini’s litigation positions were based on a clear misreading of Oracle’s software licensing agreements.” 

Rimini Street’s home page now declares: “Other people do software. We do support.” 

We see similar behavior among TPMs who go into a customer and denigrate the OEMs’ pricing and practices in order to win a service contract. One reason CDS had a record year in 2021 is that customers prefer a harmonious relationship between the service provider and the OEM, as they continue to rely on both to keep their IT environments modern and robust enough to support the growing needs of the business.  

CDS offers a platform we call Raytrix MVS, with multiple services and capabilities based on both our own proprietary technology and our cooperative relationships with the world’s leading product companies. Our Raytrix technology is our own, developed internally, and does not rely on any of the “back doors” that can cause TPM providers to run afoul of OEMs. For customers, that means peace of mind in the quality, security and reliability of CDS across their full range of IT infrastructure systems.