SAP Unifies Its Software Maintenance Programs

Computerworld - SAP AG last week said it's extending an eight-year software maintenance program introduced for its ERP suite in March to all of its business applications. The move is aimed at replacing a mix of support offerings for different products.

SAP announced that its so-called 5-1-2 maintenance plan will now be offered across the board on new releases of applications built on top of the company's NetWeaver middleware technology. The new maintenance scheme initially was available only for its flagship mySAP ERP software.

The plan provides for five years of mainstream maintenance after applications are released. That will be followed by an initial year of extended maintenance at a higher price and two more years at an additional markup. Thereafter, users will have to negotiate maintenance contracts, SAP said.

Uwe Hommel, senior vice president of SAP's Active Global Support division, said the company is trying to enable its customers to "plan in a very safe way how to deploy the software," he said.

Driven by User Demand

Hommel added that the expansion of the maintenance plan was driven by demand from users who wanted more definitive information about support so they could do migration planning.

The 5-1-2 offering could potentially be of use for planning future upgrades, said Gerrard Rutter, vice president of information services at software vendor Adobe Systems Inc. in San Jose. However, it won't be relevant for Adobe anytime soon because the company always installs new versions of SAP's software, he added.

"Our approach is to stay current at all times," Rutter said. Adobe runs the R/3 Enterprise release of SAP's ERP applications plus its CRM and data warehousing software.

The decision to offer a consistent software maintenance plan follows SAP's announcement earlier this year that it would synchronize upgrades of the NetWeaver products, which include an integration broker as well as SAP Business Intelligence and its portal software .

Gartner Inc. analyst Brian Zrimsek said SAP is reflecting a trend among ERP vendors to treat users more as owners of software, not just as product buyers. For example, PeopleSoft Inc. last year launched an initiative dubbed Total Ownership Experience that's aimed at simplifying the installation and maintenance of its applications, he noted.

SAP's plan lets users decide whether they want to pay for the extended maintenance or migrate to newer releases, Zrimsek said. "I think it's a must—clarification, communication and formalization for the longer term," he added.

How It Works

SAP's 5-1-2 Plan New application releases will be supported for five years at SAP's regular support price, which is 17% of the cost of a software license. Users can buy one year of extended maintenance for an additional 2%. Maintenance can be extended for another two years at a 4% markup.