Gamma predicts significant rise in SAP upgrades for 2008

The company cites key reasons as increasing maintenance costs of old systems against improving application performance benefits of upgraded systems as key reasons. Its third annual SAP user survey, which takes the views of 175 SAP users in 23 countries, finds 37% saying that their companies plan to upgrade to a new SAP version next year, while an additional 17% will follow in 2009. A full 43% said the reason for upgrading SAP versions is to reduce maintenance costs, which can consume 80% of SAP operational expenses. Another key reason cited by 58% of respondents was to increase performance benefits. Since 2005, Gamma found that the percentage of respondents with databases larger than 500Gb has grown from 66% to 82% now, and that the percentage with databases larger than 2Tb has increased from 14% to 24% this year. As a result, users are demanding more sophisticated applications to manage the growing complexity of their SAP environments, and show increased willingness to spend millions to upgrade their SAP systems. Based on these results, Gamma foresees more organisations placing major investments into upgrading their SAP systems, with more than 85% of survey respondents saying their organisations plan to spend up to $25 million during the SAP upgrade process. However, the company warns that many may face further expense as they underestimate how time consuming, expensive and cumbersome it is to transition massive amounts of data into new SAP environments. Standard protocols for data transfer in SAP environments requires the replication of the entire database, meaning run times to upgrade large systems may take several weeks. Additionally, companies often face difficulties in ensuring that applications, especially third-party and customised ones, used in current SAP versions function, properly in new SAP systems.