Rimini Street, the third‑party enterprise software support firm long associated with pushing back against vendor lock‑in, is positioning itself as a pathway out of what it calls an unfolding “SaaS‑pocalypse” driven by rapid adoption of generative and agentic AI, its chief financial officer told delegates at the Gartner Finance Symposium in Sydney.
“That’s what we’re calling it,” Michael Perica said. “And in the presentation I̵...
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7;m giving here, that’s probably my favourite slide.” Perica argued that public markets are already pricing a correction into traditional enterprise software vendors as they redirect large amounts of capital , frequently raised through debt , into cloud and hardware to underpin their AI strategies. Those balance‑sheet moves, he suggested, increase the financial pressure on companies whose revenues rely on long‑running software licences and recurring vendor maintenance.
Perica warned that the arrival of AI‑driven development tools gives enterprises an alternative route to acquire tailored systems, reducing reliance on packaged SaaS. “No, it’s not going to turn off overnight. You do have existing contracts, for example. But what the [stock] market is telling you, by adjusting evaluations, is that there are alternate paths, and they come from agentic AI,” he said, arguing that organisations that build an “agentic AI layer” can modernise faster and more cheaply than by buying incremental functionality from incumbents.
Rimini Street says its response is Smart Path, a three‑phase methodology it presents as a way for organisations to preserve value in existing software investments while funding modernisation. According to a company press release, thousands of organisations have adopted the Smart Path approach to “support, optimise, and innovate” their enterprise portfolios without submitting to costly vendor‑mandated upgrades or migrations. Rimini Street materials describe the process as starting with stabilising and supporting fully licensed systems, then optimising operations, and finally layering in AI and automation capabilities to drive innovation.
The company emphasises that Smart Path can replace vendor support with Rimini Support™, free up budget through efficiency gains via Rimini Optimise™, and then redirect resources to transformation projects under Rimini Innovate™, according to the firm’s solution brief and datasheets. Rimini Street also offers advisory services and workshops to guide customers through the three steps, the firm says.
Perica framed the strategy in continuity with Rimini Street’s origins. The company was founded to provide a lower‑cost alternative to vendor support for depreciated Oracle systems, he noted, allowing clients to avoid escalating maintenance fees and forced upgrades. “We gave clients an off‑ramp from lock‑in two decades ago; now we’re giving them an off‑ramp from AI lock‑in,” he said, signaling the firm’s intent to apply the same choice‑oriented philosophy to customers wary of becoming tied to a single AI supplier.
That pitch arrives amid broader industry moves to buy AI capabilities rather than build them, and conversely, to protect incumbent positions by bundling AI with core software offerings. Perica cautioned that committing significant capital to one vendor’s AI stack risks rapid obsolescence. “By keeping innovation outside and above your systems, you own it, you customise it, and you participate in the future improvements instead of waiting for the vendor to deliver them,” he said.
Rimini Street’s own business, however, is not immune to market pressures. The company, which once listed on Nasdaq and grew into an international operator by challenging maintenance economics, has seen its share price come under strain similar to other enterprise vendors, a reminder that its strategy will be judged by investors as well as customers.
Industry observers note a tension at the heart of the transition to AI: vendors are investing heavily to embed AI into their platforms, betting that integrated offerings will strengthen customer retention, while some clients and independent providers argue that decoupling AI from legacy systems can be both more cost‑effective and more flexible. According to Rimini Street, Smart Path aims to exploit that divergence by enabling organisations to fund AI projects from savings realised by moving off vendor support, and then to select best‑of‑breed AI services rather than accept those bundled by legacy providers.
Rimini Street has produced videos and datasheets describing how freed resources can be redeployed into AI, automation and analytics projects without inflating overall IT budgets, and it highlights partnerships with platform vendors to deliver the “agentic AI” layer it advocates. The company presents Smart Path as a route to faster time‑to‑market and improved operational performance while retaining control over future innovation, a message likely to resonate with organisations seeking to manage both cost and agility during a period of rapid technological change.
Whether the market ultimately validates the idea of a broad “SaaS‑pocalypse” will depend on how quickly enterprises adopt autonomous AI tooling in place of packaged applications, how successfully incumbent suppliers monetise AI enhancements, and how effectively independent support and advisory firms translate short‑term savings into sustainable transformation. Rimini Street is betting its history of challenging lock‑in will give it a role in that transition; its Smart Path materials set out the mechanics by which it expects to do so, while the company’s executives stress the choice customers can exercise over where and how they deploy AI.
Source: Noah Wire Services
