SAP's controversial decision to roll out Enterprise Support to
all customers
dominated the first day of the 2008 SAP UK & Ireland User
Group annual conference in London.
Greg Pike, senior vice-president of SAP Active Global Support
America, detailed the key features and the recently-announced
enhancements of the scheme to be rolled out from January 2009.
"Enterprise Support is a broadening of the support offering to
cover business operations end-to-end to enable innovation while
reducing risk and cost at the same time," he said.
But, a show of hands indicated that most delegates were still
not convinced that SAP Enterprise Support represented true value to
the business.
Many customers object to the planned phased increase
from 17% of the software cost to 22% in the next five
years.
SAP plans to introduce the first increase to 18.2% in January,
but further increases will depend on meeting key performance
indicators (KPIs) agreed with SAP user groups.
The business software maker and the SAP User Group Executive
Network (SUGEN) announced the
agreement last week.
SAP will not be able to introduce the second planned increase to
19.8% in 2010 if Enterprise Support fails to meet the jointly
agreed KPIs.
Pike said the agreement with SUGEN and the recently announced
extended maintenance support periods for SAP R3, ERP 6 and
Netweaver 7 was proof that SAP was listening to customers.
Customers will now get an additional year's support for R3 and
two years for ERP 6 and Netweaver 7 as well as access to
engineering architects five days a year in response to
feedback.
Pike said he was confident that once users were familiar with
the content of SAP Enterprise Support, they would see the full
value to the business.