Earlier this month SAP released its preliminary fourth quarter 2007 earnings on the heels of its Jan. 30 full report. On the very bottom of the press release, in a footnote, the company actually intimated some pretty substantive information: SAP has discontinued its TomorrowNow operations.

In the spring of 2007 Oracle filed suit against SAP alleging corporate theft on a grand scale based on allegations that TomorrowNow, which provides third party support for Oracle's PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and Siebel applications, had downloaded a lot more information from Oracle's support site than it had legal access or privilege to. By summer SAP had conducted its own internal investigation and found TomorrowNow had indeed illegally downloaded information from Oracle.

After jettisoning TomorrowNow's CEO in November SAP said that it was considering selling the beleaguered subsidiary. But nowhere was it clear--until the preliminary earnings footnote--that SAP had decided to vanquish TomorrowNow prior to a sale.

CNET reported Jan. 16 that sources confirmed Jan. 22 was the deadline for potential buyers to declare their interest in TomorrowNow. While there's been no public information regarding interested buyers, it's hard to imagine who might want to buy TomorrowNow outside of Rimini Street or NetCustomer, the other two companies that compete with TomorrowNow. (Rimini Street's founder, Seth Ravin, co-founded TomorrowNow, so there's a real history between those two companies.)

But the real question remains: Even if there is a buyer for TomorrowNow--whether that be a competitor or another investor--what is the damage to the very nascent (but very necessary) third-party support industry? The short answer: Forget the legal wrangling between Oracle and SAP. If third-party support loses, SAP, Oracle and every other software vendor out there wins.

If customers deem third-party support options --which provide support for enterprise apps at about 50 cents on the dollar--are too risky, they'll have no other option but to stick with their vendor provided support. At an average of about 26 percent of the total cost of ownership, vendor support is, by and large, deemed too expensive. Forrester analyst Ray Wang released a report Jan. 25 that found that "software licensing and pricing continues to be marred by complexity, soaring maintenance costs, and a lack of flexibility and alignment with business goals."

And without any real competition from third party support providers - at least for the time being - vendors can continue to charge at will.

Here's Wang's view on the current state of software licensing, according to his report:

"The transformational effects of apps trends like SaaS and SOA will bleed into future apps licensing. As firms' overall displeasure with application licensing and pricing on the one hand is met on the other hand with a growing interest in and adoption of SaaS and SOA, firms will begin to conceive of licensing and pricing in new ways. These new thoughts will give rise to new demands, and firms will exercise alternative options. In the meantime, business process and applications professionals must arm their firms to mitigate licensing pain points."

According to CNET's article, there has been some speculation that the sale of TomorrowNow could be part of potential settlement negotiations with Oracle. Irregardless of the outcome of Oracle's suit against SAP, both parties win. In fact, all software vendors win if companies deem third party support too risky to try.

That said, there's an upside to this story. On Jan. 22 Rimini Street reported that it achieved record 3rd and 4th quarter 2007 results and surpassed full year 2007 operating plans setting all time highs for new clients, sales bookings and average sales price. The company more than quadrupled its sales in 2007.

Now it's not surprising that Rimini Street would see a 90 percent win rate against its closest competitor - TomorrowNow. Once SAP announced its intention to sell the company you can bet there were no bonus checks handed out to the sales team. But David Rowe, vice president of Marketing and Global Alliances said in an e-mail that the vast majority of Rimini Street's growth in 2007 was organic growth - not TomorrowNow conversions.

Rowe also said that TomorrowNow is still looking at potentially acquiring TomorrowNow. "We do have interest, but we need to analyze carefully given the high-level of interest we are already seeing directly from TN clients."