February 04, 2013, 3:26 PM — SAP is planning to impose a higher price on its Standard Support software maintenance offering later this year, with the increase applying only to new contracts.
"In order to ensure the same high level of quality support in the future, we will change the maintenance rate for new maintenance contracts with SAP Standard Support from 18% to 19%, effective July 15, 2013," SAP said in a statement released Monday. "This adjustment does not apply to any existing maintenance contracts for SAP Standard Support closed before July 15, 2013."
"We want to inform our clients early to enable a better budget planning and adjustment for 2013," SAP added. "Therefore, we encourage customers to take advantage of the opportunity to purchase new licenses with SAP Standard Support ahead of this change at the existing 18% rate until July 14, 2013."
SAP also offers a higher-end Enterprise Support service that costs more money than Standard. The enterprise service was the subject of much controversy several years ago after SAP announced that all customers would be transitioned over to it. After an outcry from user groups around the world, SAP made some pricing concessions and also restored the Standard Support option.
The standard support pricing change announced Monday doesn't apply to SAP's Business One application, according to a statement. Nor is Enterprise Support affected, SAP said.
But SAP long ago tacitly signaled a Standard Support price hike could come this year. An official company presentation dated March 2010 states that Standard Support's list price would be locked in until the end of 2012, compared to the end of 2016 for Enterprise Support.
It's not clear how much additional money SAP stands to generate from the Standard Support increase, as SAP CFO Werner Brandt has said that some 95% of customers have adopted Enterprise Support.
Still, SAP's announcement could rankle some users.
Customers should ask SAP a number of questions, wrote analyst Frank Scavo, president of IT consulting firm Strativa, in a blog post.
