SAP seeks to defuse support fee row

Software giant SAP has met representatives of 12 user groups to counter criticism of changes to its support offering, which resulted in a significant price hike for users.

The software giant and the SAP User Group Executive Network (Sugen) ­ a global federation of 12 SAP user groups ­ have agreed to establish a taskforce charged with feeding back concerns to SAP’s management.
The taskforce will also educate Sugen members on how to get value from the support contracts.

“Sugen and its member groups serve as a vital sounding board to help validate our new initiatives,” explained Leo Apotheker, SAP co-chief executive officer.

Earlier this year, SAP whipped up a storm after confirming that all customers on its Standard Support contract would be moved to an Enterprise Support agreement. The UK user group was a particularly vocal opponent of the move, arguing that users would be charged for services they would not use.

Now SAP is sweetening the package. It will provide five sessions of remote advice per year whereby software architects will help customers evaluate software enhancements.

A spokesman for the UK user group welcomed the changes. “It’s a good step forward. We will be working with SAP through Sugen first to put in place agreed [key performance indicators] and then to monitor SAP’s support against these,” he said.

But he warned that if members did not get any benefits from the changes to support, it would be difficult for SAP to enforce the anticipated price hikes.
Sasha Drennan, head of business improvement at Lincolnshire
County Council, told Computing that she still did not expect to get value from the additional charges.

“I would expect a lot of what SAP is providing here to be offered as part of our managed service,” she said.