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SAP user group DSAG has expressed complaints about recent increases in support costs for the German company’s popular business software.
Thomas Henzler, DSAG board member, said: The register (opens in new tab) that while SAP is “in its rights” when it comes to raising prices, “the value received for maintenance had declined over time, making the price increase difficult to justify”.
The executive further claimed that “we are seeing an increasing modularization of the core ERP product (S/4HANA)”, meaning “solutions that were previously part of the ERP are now increasingly being marketed individually and to the customer.” , have to pay extra for it”.
How big are the walks?
The prices for SAP Standard Support, SAP Enterprise Support and SAP Product Support for Large Enterprises are: ready to soar (opens in new tab) for existing customers from January 1, 2023.
SAP claims that the price increases are in line with the local consumer price indices and that they are capped at 3.3%.
SAP justified the increases by saying it was “not immune” to the broader economic trend of high inflation rates.
“SAP is not exempt from these developments, as they are rapidly impacting our offering through increased energy and labor costs, as well as rising costs for third-party services,” said a SAP spokesperson.
SAP was able to respond to the user group’s claims with some additional justifications, tellingly: The register its strategy of offering its tools in more specialized components enables its “customers to make more targeted investments where they expect the most value added and operational benefits to their business”.
The move comes as SAP is still turning its business to a new model. In October 2020, the company said it was “all about its shift to cloud computing,” abandoning its near-term profitability targets.
Unfortunately for end users, this probably won’t be the last big price hike we’ll see from major software vendors.
Gartner research recently predicted that software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors plan to significantly increase their prices over the next 36 months, in some cases by as much as 20%.
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