As well as tech, this iTWire writer loves air travel. It's a fascinating thing to sit in a plane and marvel at how humanity combated the competing tensions of lift and gravity, thrust and drag. It turns out business isn't too dissimilar; replace lift and gravity with sales and costs; replace thrust and drag with maintenance and innovation. These forces compete against each other and a successful business manages to balance the mix to keep itself soaring.

It's easy to say, but hard to do. Rimini Street co-founder, CEO, and chairman of the board Seth Ravin spoke with iTWire while visiting Australia to share some experience and advice.

Ravin founded the company 19 years ago with a focus on aiding companies to free up people, time, and money to invest in innovation. "Companies need to grow and create competitive advantage," Ravin said, explaining his business achieves this by coming in and working with companies to reduce costs in certain parts of their portfolio, thus freeing up those items for better, smarter use.

There's a lot to unpack here. In today's world, "real innovation is data, and how to figure out how to use it to make the business better," Ravin said. "How to convert it into decision support, to determine what customers want a year from now. Let's say I'm a retailer - what do I need on the shelf a year from now? Or, I'm a manufacturer - what parts do I need two to three years from now?"

"Everyone needs a crystal ball," he said. But yet "Everyone has the data to give these insight. That's what they're hungry for, and it's worth gold."

It's Ravin's clear and unequivocal position that this is what you need to focus on right now to help your business navigate the difficult economic times we are in, and to come out more successful than ever on the other said.

Yet, "so many pieces of the business are going on around what to about the ridiculous ERP cycle of migrations and upgrades when the truth is for most of these businesses and government agencies is it's just costly work that distracts and offers nothing."

"These projects take people from real innovation."

You don't have to be an economist to recognise costs are out of control, and companies of all sizes face the squeeze of tighter margins than ever. Their margins are pressed; they suffer from hyper competition and can't raise their prices. Yet the costs keep going up. Instead of expending so much time, money, and resources on upgrading ERPs or suffering the brunt of complex subscription pricing changes, "IT can become a leveragable tool," Ravin said.

Ultimately, you need to save money. It sounds obvious, but how? If you can't change the topline in growth and get more sales right away, the conventional wisdom is you must reduce your costs. The increasing costs of goods and labour costs must be offset somehow. And sure, "we can all cut costs, lay off people, and deliver more to the bottom line," Ravin said. "But nobody has ever cut their way to innovation."

It's for this reason, Ravin says, you see companies like ServiceNow, Automation Now, and UIPath all rising. "It's all about productivity." To counter rising costs your organisation needs to automate, and become more productive.

"When we work with customers it's not all about cutting costs, but smart allocation of costs."

For example, "why do an ERP upgrade that you don't need, and has no return on investment?" Ravin asks. "Why not instead take the people, time, and money to put in new data analytics? Put in AI to help the company."

That's the Rimini Street formula and key to success: "Let's make investments. Save money on one side, and re-invest in the right projects, becoming a funding source for the new projects the business didn't think it could fund. Get the savings to the bottom line and get new investments in innovation," Ravin said.

As a sample, Rimini Street explores whether upgrading to Oracle Database 23ai is really worth it, and if you're simply smarter staying with Oracle Database 19c or older.

"That's the expertise Rimini Street brings. We can stablise systems and bring the maximum return on investment. It's how we move business forwards - helping you take all that money, time, and people to help you work on these other, innovative projects."

These costly systems and potentially pointless ERP projects that Ravin refers to come in the form of enterprise software companies pressing their customers to migrate from on-premises software to cloud-based subscription models, or changing license costs, or saying you must upgrade to new releases or you can't have support anymore.

In fact, you might think of vendors like SAP, Oracle, and VMware, for some examples. "I've been in the software business a long time," Ravin said. "Moving customers to new releases is a money-making proposition."

"Accenture, CapGemini - everyone is in on it because it creates work and makes money."

Ravin jokes that it's akin to a cartel - the hardware guys, the software guys, the implementers - "if you're not buying something new, they're not making money. The cycle is built-in."

This is where Rimini Street comes in. "We offer optionality. We say you don't have to do those things," Ravin said. Using an analogy, "You don't have to change your car every three years - you could drive it for 20 years until the wheels fall off, but that's your choice."

So too, "vendors say you have to upgrade or migrate or you get no support," but "we're giving cusotmers choice."

In fact, Rimini Street guarantees to support your existing platforms and products for a minimum of 15 years after customers come to them.

"We say we don't care if your car is 15 years old already; we guarantee another 15 years of smooth running."

And whether you stick with Rimini Street for 15 years or only one year it buys your business the time, money, and people to run your ERP as-is for longer. There's no need to upgrade it; instead you can use these items you release to focus on analytics, focus on data, and roll out new features and tech to change the business.

After all, "you don't need to replace your ERP because you're still invoicing and cutting paycheques and running the business," Ravin said.

"An ERP is a key part of the business backbone," make no mistake. "But it's not strategic. You don't compete based on your general ledger or how pretty your payroll is."

Thus, the Rimini Street message is clear: don't get sucked into your enterprise vendor's whirlpool and vortex of pricing changes, subscription models, and endless cycles of upgrades. Instead, let Rimini Street support it and embrace the optionality they offer to fund innovation instead of upgrades and changes that aren't useful.

A clear example is VMware and the aggressive pricing and licensing changes that came from its new owner, Broadcom. Earlier this year Rimini Street announced new support services for VMware customers with perpetual subscriptions.

"We've had an overwhelming level of response," Ravin said.

"These guys [Broadcom] tried to come in and say they're no longer going to support perpetual licenses and you now must have a subscription. Imagine being told you have to now pay rent on a vhicle you already own?"

And, "not only do you have to pay, but they say they're going to bundle extra software you don't want or need and charge you for it. The new bill may be 10x, 12x what you're paying today."

"Imagine paying $1m a year for VMware then told your new price is $10m to $12m?" Ravin asked. "That's crushing."

Instead, the Rimini Street VMware services allow a company to have the confidence of full support services for their existing VMware products and not pay any more than what they were already paying. "Even if you stick with us for only one year, five years, 10 years, we give you optionality and time."

"You don't have to be pushed to the wall with VMware," Ravin said. "You can take your time. We will run your systems and you can negotiate with VMware. You don't need to be pressured to re-contract. Or you could explore other software options like Nutanix."

Of course, if you ultimately decide to migrate away from VMware "being critical infrastructure, you'll want to test and prove it, and that might take several years," Ravin said. Again, Rimini Street "buys you time to do it right."

Sure, some customers might sign with VMware, and some may leave VMware. However, you don't have to make that decision under pressure. "You need time and don't have to be jammed against a wall," Ravin said. "It's not viable for key infrastructure to be in a position where you are up against a wall."

It's all a strong, and compelling message. With cost of living issues, rising mortgages, and other factors affecting consumers and spending, businesses are feeling the crunch and striving to manage increasing costs against the pressure to avoid raising prices.

If you're a business leader, Ravin's advice is to "take action now."

"Revenues are down, and cash is down. Cash is gold - if you don't have cash your business is gone," he said. "When sales go down, it can take months before companies respond to cut their own costs. Companies can act too late. When you see the economics for consumers will cause a drop in spending, when you see mortgages go up, it ripples out."

"Businesses must react to economic changes, and you must get ahead of revenue falls. Companies should heed those warnings and take actions," Ravin said.

"When we come in we don't talk about this system or that, but the bigger picture. How to achieve objectives of growth, profits, and competitive advantage, and how IT plays a role. We talk about how to reduce costs and get a return on investment, and do the right things with the right systems instead of doing things that don't add value," he said.

"It's all about running businesses with a return on investment mentality," Ravin said. "Companies need to react or they'll be in financial trouble."

That's the absolute no-nonsense message Rimini Street wants you to know. You can have options, you can have time, and you can change unlock the resources you'd be expending on maintenance projects that you neither need or receive value from, focusing instead on innovative projects that truly turn the dial for you.

Ravin has been in Australia for "Street Smart" - thought leadership events his company holds around the world. This week, two Street Smart events have run in Melbourne and in Sydney. These events bring Rimini Street customers and select prospects together to talk about new technologies and the challenges that customers face. "Customers present to customers about projects and what worked," Ravin said.

"It's like the movie Fight Club - our first rule is we maintain confidentality in the room. It's a fantastic environment and different from anything else executives have been to. They come to Street Smart to share insights with each other about what they've done and what's worked."

The formula is clearly working; 200 executives attended Street Smart in Japan, seeing it as a "must attend". In Brazil over 100 executives joined together, and more than 80 in Kajarta. "People are hungry for forums where executives can exchange information and learn."

Meanwhile, with 19 years under the Rimini Street belt, 2025 is shaping up to be a big year as it celebrates it's 20th anniversary.

Over that time Ravin jokes he's "a lot older" and that he "used to have a lot more hair", but the reality is a company he started one night in his living room now has thousands of employees across 22 countries, serving more than 5,000 customers in 150 countries, and with revenues over $USD 400 million. Rimini Street also has a charitable foundation to contribute back to society.

However, numbers aside, Ravin says a key factor is the people. "What a ride. People make it all happen," he said.

"When you're a people company, having thousands of people passionate about supporting customers, supporting billions of transactions every week, supporting thousands upon thousands of pay cheques, being passionate about the urgency of what they do - it's so humbling to have those responsibilities that our customers trust us with to make the world go around."

As a parting note, Ravin says as business leaders start planning their 2025 technology investment plans and budgets he urges to keep in mind the need to "use data to find what it means to take your company further. Everyone needs to predict the future."

And the key to achieving your data and AI goals is to flip the dial from expending all your effort on pointless upgrades and licensing changes. Free the time, people, and money and focus on innovation. This is what Rimini Street gives you.