SAP bows to pressure on maintenance costs and agrees success KPIs

Just as important, SAP says it has "modified" the 2008 pricing programme for SAP Enterprise Support as it applies to migrated support contracts – coinciding with SAP's recently announced extended seven-year maintenance promise. As a result, starting in 2010, the price of SAP Enterprise Support for existing customers will continue to increase, based on individual contract terms, but will not be higher than a yearly fixed upper cap. SAP says that translates to an increase average no higher than 3.1% per year from 2010 onwards. And on top of that, SAP and SUGEN are also rolling out a joint benchmarking programme, using the new KPIs to assess how existing SAP customers are deriving best value from SAP Enterprise Support itself. "We are convinced that SAP Enterprise Support delivers unparalleled value to all customers and, as a demonstration of our commitment, we will provide tangible reductions in their operational costs on a defined schedule," insists Léo Apotheker, co-CEO of SAP. "SAP is now the role model for the evolution of software support, offering an industry game-changing standard for transparency, accountability and the clear measurement of value. We remain strongly committed to helping our customers both protect their investments and closely manage costs," he adds.