Ravin predicts that adding SAP's products to its services will more than double its overall target customer base in 2009. "Everything we've seen leads us to believe that this will be a robust market and a much bigger market than the combined PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel market that we service today," he says.

The timing of the announcement as well as the location (at SAP's high-profile Sapphire event) is no coincidence. "At Sapphire, we're going to be introducing SAP customers to an alternative," Ravin says. "We're going out there with the assumption that there's a very thin understanding in the SAP world that an alternative exists, and we're going to start from scratch, just as we have done with every product line."

Rimini Street's move to service SAP's applications was bolstered when SAP quietly announced that as of Feb. 1, it was phasing out its Basic Support offering (which, at 17 percent, was a bargain for many companies) for all new customers. Instead, those new SAP customers now have to purchase its Enterprise Support plan, priced at 22 percent. (See "SAP Raises Software Maintenance Fees for New Customers" for more details on SAP's fee increase and SAP's reasons for making the switch.)

That was the "icing on the cake for us," Ravin says. "We've been listening very carefully to make sure we're designing a program that's going to deliver the kind of value at half the price, and with SAP raising their maintenance fee rates, that just made it a lot easier for us."

SAP's first quarter earnings, released last week, were mixed: On one hand, it had a 22 percent decline in income from the previous year's results and announced a slower rollout of its Business ByDesign product, which is an on-demand offering that targets small and midsize businesses. (For a look inside SAP's SMB strategy, see "SAP Pays Partners, Goes with Gusto for SMB Customers.") However, SAP's revenue growth hit the double digits, and it continues to gain market share. In addition, on Friday, SAP announced a new partnership with RIM to deliver SAP's business applications to BlackBerrys.

As to whether SAP would be surprised by Rimini Street's announcement, Ravin doesn't think it will shock SAP execs. "I'm sure they've been expecting it," he says. As for Rimini Street, the timing is just right. "Really, at this point," Ravin says, "the opportunity is just too good."