Forrester’s Wang thinks it is the former. “This is still a great business to be in,” he says, adding that despite efforts by the major vendors to improve customer satisfaction, response times and upgrade benefits, most customers still believe that they are not realizing enough benefits for what they’re paying in license fees over a typical 10-year contract period.

Ray Thomas is one IT executive who is sold on the concept. Thomas is the director of finance and technology at Beekley Corp., a midsize medical products company in the diagnostics field. His predecessor had implemented a Siebel CRM system, and when Thomas took over he says he wasn’t receiving the service from his local Siebel value-added reseller (VAR).

“We were not able to get the attention or services with Siebel or the local VAR,” Thomas recalls. In addition, he says Siebel’s maintenance costs “were a little onerous for us. We had to look elsewhere.” So, after the first year, he decided to stop paying Siebel.

Eighteen months after signing a contract with Rimini Street, Thomas says that he has received great support from the company and has saved “over six digits” at this point by not having to pay Siebel’s fees. “And I’m taking all the kudos for saving the funds!” he says with a laugh.

Thomas does recall the conversations he had with his IT peers when he told them of his plans nearly two years ago. “They were very horrified,” he says. “They said, ‘You’re kidding?’” His peers either didn’t know much about the service Rimini Street provided or knew about it but were concerned about the financial implications of leaving Oracle.

For him, however, the change came down to a phenomenon that CIOs have historically had to deal with: Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. While he’s happy with the Siebel package itself, he says, “I don’t need a Siebel [support contract] to provide me that comfort level. It has worked out.”

As to the ongoing saga between Oracle and TomorrowNow, Thomas says that he’s aware of it, but “I didn’t feel that Rimini Street put me in any type of predicament,” he says. “I’m following the rules of the software license agreement, and I don’t anticipate there being any problems or repercussions.”

Of course, when and if Thomas goes to upgrade to the next version of the Siebel package (and he’s not sure of that right now), Oracle’s standard agreement requires that Thomas will have to pay the past support payments. (Industry experts say, however, that issue isn’t a huge sticking point when negotiations commence.) Thomas isn’t worried because he says even with those fees “we’ll still be way ahead of ourselves” in terms of the costs savings and ROI.