By Gerardo Banegas | BANSE LLC | SAP Insights
For years, SAP’s dominance in the enterprise software market has come with a hidden cost: restrictive commercial practices that lock you in, limit your choices, and inflate your IT spending. But the tide is turning. SAP is currently facing significant antitrust lawsuits in the United States and a formal investigation by the European Union — and this creates unprecedented leverage for you as a customer.
The Familiar Frustrations: What SAP Customers Have Faced
If you’ve worked with SAP for any length of time, you’ve likely encountered at least one of these pain points:
- Forced Migrations & ECC Support Lock-in: SAP has aggressively pushed customers toward S/4HANA, often threatening to cut off mainstream maintenance for ECC. This leaves many organizations feeling coerced into expensive, complex migrations they may not yet be ready for.
- Digital Access Licensing & Data Extraction: Accessing your own SAP data for use with third-party analytics, AI, or process mining tools has become a minefield. SAP’s Digital Access licensing model can impose exorbitant and unpredictable fees for data exchanged with non-SAP systems.
- HANA Database Tying: For companies moving to S/4HANA, SAP has largely mandated the use of its proprietary HANA database — even where other, more cost-effective solutions exist. This limits customer choice and inflates overall system costs.
- The Working System Trap: Many organizations have spent decades and millions of dollars tailoring their ECC environments to fit unique business processes — only to be pushed toward abandoning a perfectly functional system.
The Walls Are Closing In: Lawsuits & Investigations You Need to Know
- Teradata v. SAP (USA): Accuses SAP of illegally tying its HANA database to its applications and misappropriating trade secrets. This case is heading to trial, putting significant pressure on SAP’s licensing practices.
- Celonis v. SAP (USA): Directly challenges SAP’s alleged monopolistic practices in controlling data access to favor its own analytics products over best-of-breed third-party tools.
- European Commission Formal Investigation: The EU is scrutinizing whether SAP abuses its dominant market position by forcing customers to buy support exclusively from SAP, imposing punitive reinstatement fees when customers return from third-party support, and making it difficult to stop paying maintenance on unused shelfware licenses.
What This Means for You: Unprecedented Leverage
These legal and regulatory actions are creating a crucial window of opportunity. The message from regulators is clear: depriving customers of choice and fair access is not acceptable. Here is how you can use this moment:
- Negotiate Better Maintenance & Support: The EU investigation is pushing SAP toward meaningful concessions — including more flexibility to drop maintenance on unused licenses and the abolishment of punitive reinstatement fees. Use this as leverage in your next contract discussion.
- Challenge Digital Access & Data Fees: With the Celonis lawsuit in play, you have stronger grounds to push back on restrictive data access licensing. Demand clear, predictable, and fair terms for integrating your SAP data with third-party tools.
- Demand Database Choice: The Teradata case provides leverage to question forced HANA adoption and explore alternative database strategies — giving you more control over your technology stack and total cost of ownership.
Don’t Remain Passive — Act Now
If your organization is grappling with high SAP costs, restrictive contracts, or feeling locked into unfavorable terms, now is the time to act. Review your current agreements, understand your rights, and proactively engage your SAP account executive with this new information as leverage.
At BANSE LLC, we bring 25+ years of SAP Basis and architecture experience to help organizations navigate exactly these kinds of complex SAP landscape decisions — from licensing strategy to S/4HANA readiness assessments. The industry is watching. Make sure your business benefits from these significant shifts.
Need help navigating your SAP landscape strategy?
BANSE LLC offers senior-level SAP Basis consulting with deep expertise in licensing, migrations, and cloud deployments.
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