By Nathan Dukes
SAP’s planned Enterprise Support price changes have been postponed pending further dialogue with customers and user groups.
In a press statement released Tuesday, SAP said they had formed a task force to reach out to these groups to continue dialogue ‘in order to maximize customer value from SAP’s entire support offerings’.
SAP made the decision following intense debate over the proposed pricing changes.
SAP has received a mixed response from interest groups since it first announced the proposed changes in July 2008.
The plan was for new customers to move to a standardised Enterprise Support program, with a pricing model of 22{db8ca4bbfe57dc8f9b6df9233a3a6c04f4968125edf9bb330d4f787c3a87cd09} of maintenance base by 2012. The changes would apply to all solutions licenses before July 1 2008.
Beginning in January 2009, there was to be a graduated pricing program that incrementally moves customers from their old pricing agreements to the new one.
Bill McDermott, president of global field operations at SAP told InformationWeek in January the proposed price increases were needed to cover rising costs from customers who had highly customised systems.
Introduction of the pricing model will remain on hold until SAP announces the outcomes of the task force in the beginning of 2010. SAP said it is taking into consideration the concerns of its customers and recognises the ongoing pressures bearing down on IT budgets in the current economic environment.
In April SAP established a set of KPIs with the SAP User Group Executive Network (SUGEN) to observe uptake of the program. If the KPIs were not met, the support model would be halted.
SAP said Tuesday the results from the KPIs showed the Enterprise Support model offers clear value to participating SAP customers.
