To be competitive and profitable, businesses are shifting their mindset from routine operations to expansion and innovation. CIOs understand they must also transform their team from a reactive, technology-driven cost center to a strategic IT organization. Despite their best efforts, however, many IT teams are still at the mercy of vendor-dictated roadmaps: mandatory upgrade cycles for full support, forced lock-in to immature technologies, and recurring costs associated with maintaining existing systems. In our experience, these roadblocks can leave IT teams without funding and resources to drive strategic outcomes, limiting their agility and making digital transformation unachievable.

Pat Phelan recently joined Rimini Street as a VP of Market Research. She is developing a product marketing research agenda that provides an ecosystem perspective and informs business decisions across critical topics – including enterprise software, third-party support, IT optimization, and application strategies.

Pat has 37 years of packaged application experience in various industries, both public and private, including commercial manufacturers, service firms, federal/state/local government and education. Prior to joining Rimini Street, she was at Gartner for 18 years providing CIOs and IT leaders with research and advice on methods and strategies for managing the ERP/business application life cycle, with a special focus on restructuring support as applications are moved to the cloud.