SAP Rise Costs: Rebrand Concerns

SAP’s spokesperson acknowledged that there have been adjustments to the FUE for some functions, but said that, on the whole, the company had moved things into less expensive tiers, acknowledging only that “We did upgrade three authorization entries in our ruleset, which is uncommon. In most cases, we downgrade these authorizations, which provides access to a broader group of people. In this instance, these authorizations were previously incorrectly classified. However, this does not mean a direct increase or decrease in cost as these are narrow by feature access, and users have multiple authorizations.”

In the face of such changes, Bickley said, “SAP customers must factor into their TCO active and ongoing monitoring of SAP’s license requirements and audit against their current environment in order to stay compliant.”

On premises off the menu

SAP has been discouraging the purchase of on-premises licenses, Bickley said, sometimes even telling customers that they’re no longer available, in its attempts to push customers onto S/4HANA in the cloud.