As Dennis Howlett reports, SAP may be backing away (or delaying or just trying to take off public discussion) from its plans to increase maintenance pricing from 17 to 22%.
But lost in that commotion is the fact that 17% was already too high. The increase to 22% was in some ways just a diversionary tactic.
As I wrote here
"But the fundamental question SAP keeps dancing around is did the base 17% deliver value in the first place? Looked at from a customer's perspective for the last several years, when you amortize the annual maintenance cost by the number of support calls logged, new function points implemented etc - the $ 640 military commode looks awfully cheap.
Then there is SAP's own cost base. They have offshored some of the support. There is more automation - more customers get self-service support answers through knowledge bases. Their community is handling many routine support questions (and customers are funding that community, not SAP). In the spirit of rollbacks, SAP support costs should have been declining for the last several years.
SAP knows that only too well. SAP offered Oracle customers cut-rate maintenance through its TomorrowNow unit, but steadfastly told its own customers they did not deserve a similar, low-touch offering."
Oh, and by the way, Oracle, IBM, Lawson and other enterprise customers need to be asking for similar concessions.
