Spinnaker Support Oracle Third Party Support: Cost Savings and Considerations for CIOs

Why Oracle Third-Party Support Has Become a Mainstream Decision

Oracle's support model has always generated controversy. The 22% annual support fee on perpetual licenses — combined with Oracle's contractual right to increase that fee by 8% per year — means support costs compound relentlessly regardless of whether the underlying software is stable, actively developed, or meeting the organisation's needs. An organisation paying $1 million in Oracle support fees today will pay approximately $1.47 million in five years if Oracle exercises its 8% annual increase right — without any additional software being licensed.

This compounding cost trajectory, combined with Oracle's pressure to upgrade or migrate to cloud-based products, has made third-party support a strategic rather than fringe consideration for many CIOs. When organisations are running stable Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, or Siebel installations with no imminent plans to upgrade or migrate, paying Oracle for support that primarily benefits Oracle's cloud migration agenda is increasingly difficult to justify.

Spinnaker Support entered this market in 2008, building an alternative support model that covers Oracle applications and databases at approximately 50% of Oracle's current support fee. Having served over 1,000 global clients across multiple continents, Spinnaker has established itself as a credible, experienced Oracle third-party support provider with strong technical depth in Oracle application support.

What Spinnaker Support Covers for Oracle

Spinnaker Support's Oracle coverage spans the major Oracle application product families and Oracle Database. Understanding the scope of Spinnaker's coverage is the first step in evaluating whether third-party support is appropriate for a specific Oracle environment.

Oracle Applications Coverage

Spinnaker supports Oracle E-Business Suite (all modules including Financials, HCM, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Projects, and Service), PeopleSoft (HCM, Finance, Supply Chain, Campus Solutions), JD Edwards EnterpriseOne (all modules), Siebel CRM, and Oracle Hyperion products. Spinnaker's application support covers break-fix support, tax and regulatory updates, interoperability support (keeping existing software compatible with new operating systems and browsers), and security vulnerability management.

This coverage model is substantially equivalent to Oracle's own application support for organisations that are not planning near-term major version upgrades. Oracle's own support for older application versions — particularly EBS R12.1 and earlier, PeopleSoft 9.1 and earlier, and Siebel 8.x — has been progressively reduced to "Sustaining Support" status, which provides limited new functionality development and patches. Organisations on these older versions are effectively paying Oracle for reduced support while Spinnaker offers equivalent or enhanced coverage.

Oracle Database Coverage

Spinnaker supports Oracle Database (Enterprise Edition and Standard Edition 2) across currently deployed versions. Database support includes break-fix assistance, security vulnerability assessment and mitigation (through security analysis rather than Oracle-issued patches), performance tuning support, and integration support with the application layer.

It is important to understand that Oracle's periodic Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) are Oracle intellectual property, and third-party support providers including Spinnaker cannot provide these patches. Instead, Spinnaker's database support addresses security vulnerabilities through compensating controls and alternative mitigation strategies. For organisations with mature security practices and risk management frameworks, this approach is acceptable. For organisations that require Oracle-issued patches for regulatory compliance reasons (particularly in financial services and healthcare), this limitation requires careful evaluation.

What Spinnaker Support Does Not Cover

Being clear-eyed about the limitations of third-party support is essential for any CIO evaluating this decision. Spinnaker, like all third-party Oracle support providers, cannot replicate everything Oracle's support provides.

New Feature Development

Third-party support freezes the software at its current release. Spinnaker cannot develop new functionality, release new product versions, or provide Oracle's future product roadmap. Organisations that require new Oracle ERP features — additional modules, updated mobile interfaces, new regulatory workflows — cannot get these from Spinnaker. Any organisation with significant Oracle product enhancement plans over the next three to five years should carefully evaluate whether third-party support is compatible with those plans.

Oracle Cloud Integration

Spinnaker's support covers on-premises Oracle software. It does not extend to Oracle Fusion Cloud applications, Oracle OCI consumption, or Oracle SaaS products. Organisations in a hybrid state — running on-premises EBS while simultaneously using Oracle Cloud HCM, for example — need Oracle's own support for the cloud component and may need Spinnaker only for the on-premises layer, creating a split support model that requires careful management.

Oracle-Issued Critical Patch Updates

As noted, Oracle's CPU patches are Oracle IP. Spinnaker provides security analysis and compensating control guidance but cannot issue or distribute Oracle patches. This is the most significant limitation of third-party support from a risk management perspective. Most organisations on third-party support accept this trade-off because Oracle's patch quality for older product versions is often poor, and organisations frequently cannot apply patches without significant testing and regression risk anyway.

Spinnaker vs Rimini Street vs Oracle CSI: A Comparison

The three primary options for Oracle support are Oracle's own Customer Support Initiative (CSI) support, Rimini Street, and Spinnaker Support. Each has distinct characteristics that make it more or less appropriate depending on the organisation's Oracle landscape, risk tolerance, and strategic direction.

Oracle CSI (Customer Support Initiative)

Oracle's own support provides the full breadth of Oracle's services: CPU patches, new product releases, Oracle's knowledge base, My Oracle Support portal access, and integration with Oracle's product roadmap. Oracle CSI also provides negotiating leverage for future Oracle commercial discussions — organisations that remain on Oracle support maintain an active commercial relationship that can be leveraged in license renewal and cloud migration negotiations. The cost is 22% of net license fees, increasing at 8% per year, making it the most expensive option that grows more expensive over time without corresponding service improvement.

Rimini Street

Rimini Street is the largest third-party Oracle support provider, founded in 2005, and essentially created the Oracle third-party support market. Rimini offers broadly equivalent application support coverage to Spinnaker for Oracle EBS, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel. Rimini's pricing is typically 50% below Oracle CSI, with multi-year contracts that provide fee stability. Rimini has historically been more aggressive in its marketing claims and has faced Oracle legal action over its support methodology. Rimini's 2024 settlement with Oracle resolved the primary legal disputes and established clearer boundaries for Rimini's support delivery model.

Spinnaker Support

Spinnaker positions itself as offering deeper technical expertise and a more personalised support model than Rimini, though it operates at smaller scale. Spinnaker's pricing is broadly comparable to Rimini — typically 50% below Oracle CSI, with some variation based on Oracle product mix and contract terms. Spinnaker's technical depth for complex, multi-product Oracle environments is particularly strong, and the company's support model typically assigns named engineers to accounts rather than routing tickets through a general support pool. For organisations with complex, heavily customised Oracle EBS or PeopleSoft deployments, Spinnaker's specialised technical resources can represent a material service quality advantage over both Oracle CSI and Rimini.

The Strategic Decision Framework for Oracle Third-Party Support

Evaluating Spinnaker Support — or any Oracle third-party support provider — requires a structured decision framework that goes beyond simple cost comparison. The decision has strategic, operational, legal, and financial dimensions that must all be addressed.

Strategic Dimension: What Is Your Oracle Roadmap?

If your organisation has a defined Oracle-to-cloud migration plan within the next two to three years, third-party support may actually accelerate the transition rather than lock you in. By reducing Oracle support fees during the transition period and directing the savings toward the cloud migration investment, third-party support can be a financial enabler for modernisation.

If your organisation plans to remain on current Oracle versions for five or more years with no major Oracle-led transformation on the horizon, third-party support savings compound significantly over the multi-year period, making the economic case overwhelming. The key risk is that Oracle may use your exit from CSI as grounds to limit your access to new Oracle technology — a consideration for organisations that may need Oracle's cloud products in future.

Operational Dimension: Can Your Internal Team Manage the Transition?

Moving from Oracle CSI to third-party support requires careful operational preparation. Your internal Oracle DBA and application support teams need to understand that Oracle patches will no longer be automatically available, that support escalation paths change fundamentally, and that security management requires a more proactive compensating-controls approach. Organisations with mature internal Oracle capabilities and strong security operations typically find the transition manageable. Organisations that rely heavily on Oracle's support portal and Oracle-provided guidance may find the transition more challenging.

Financial Dimension: Model the Full Five-Year Cost

The financial case for third-party support must be modelled over a multi-year horizon, including Oracle's 8% annual support fee increases, transition costs from Oracle CSI to Spinnaker, any incremental security tooling required for compensating controls, and the opportunity cost of the redirected savings. A five-year total cost of ownership comparison typically shows savings of $2 million to $10 million for mid-to-large Oracle estates, depending on the size of the license base and current support fees. These savings must be weighed against the strategic risks and operational transition costs.

Legal Dimension: Understand the Risks Oracle Will Articulate

Oracle's position on third-party support is unequivocal: Oracle opposes it and will communicate this opposition clearly when any customer mentions third-party support considerations. Oracle's arguments include claims that third-party support providers use Oracle intellectual property, that third-party support creates compliance risks, and that moving off Oracle CSI limits access to Oracle products and cloud services. Some of these arguments have merit, some do not, and all require independent legal and licensing review before the decision is made. Oracle's responses to third-party support decisions should be treated as vendor advocacy, not independent analysis.

Five Steps to Evaluate Spinnaker Support

Step 1: Define Your Oracle Estate Scope: Create a complete inventory of Oracle products currently on Oracle CSI support — applications, databases, middleware, and any other Oracle technology products. Map each product to its current version, Oracle's support status for that version, and your internal assessment of planned upgrade or migration timing.

Step 2: Model Current and Future Oracle CSI Costs: Project your Oracle CSI costs over five years at 8% annual increase. This produces the baseline against which any third-party support saving is measured. Ensure the baseline uses your actual current support fees, not list price.

Step 3: Request a Spinnaker Proposal (and Rimini Proposal): Request detailed proposals from both Spinnaker and Rimini for your Oracle estate. Compare scope coverage, named engineer assignments, tax and regulatory update commitments, interoperability support commitments, and pricing. The competitive dynamic between Spinnaker and Rimini will produce better pricing than a single-vendor engagement.

Step 4: Conduct a Security Risk Assessment: With your security team, assess the security management approach for each vendor's solution, including how Oracle CPU patches will be managed through compensating controls, what security monitoring requirements change when Oracle CSI is discontinued, and whether any regulatory compliance requirements mandate Oracle-issued patches.

Step 5: Engage Independent Licensing Advisory: Before signing any third-party support contract, engage independent Oracle licensing advisory to review the contractual terms, assess the Oracle commercial relationship implications, and evaluate whether any active Oracle agreements contain clauses that affect the third-party support decision. Redress Compliance provides independent advisory on third-party support decisions with no commercial affiliation to any support provider.