SAP Support Commitments Change Leave-and-Return Cost
The European Commission closed case AT.40823 on 9 July 2026 by accepting binding commitments from SAP. SAP will abolish reinstatement fees. It will cap back-maintenance for customers who return after a gap. It will clarify when you may use a third-party support provider, and when you may take a different SAP support level. The commitments last ten years, apply globally, and cover on-prem maintenance only. Cloud is out. ECC mainstream support still ends on 31 December 2027. Extended maintenance still runs to 31 December 2030, at an extra two percentage points on the fee.
That’s the problem.
This is not a migration announcement, and it is not more time. The Commission did not move the ECC clock. SAP did not put cloud inside the deal. What changed is the cost of leaving SAP support and coming back, and the paper that says you are allowed to shop. If you cannot say which of your systems sit on that on-prem paper, the commitments are a press cutting.
What the Commission and SAP actually bound
The Commission opened a formal investigation in September 2025 into SAP’s aftermarket for on-prem maintenance and support in Europe. The preliminary concern was that SAP made it harder for rivals to compete and left customers with fewer choices and higher costs.
SAP published the customer-facing text on its maintenance page, effective 10 July 2026. Reinstatement fees are waived in full. Back-maintenance is capped at the lower of 50 percent of the fees that would have been due for the off-support period, or six months of SAP maintenance and support. A defined list of older products, in SAP Note 3776551, carries no back-maintenance at all.
That is a published cap. Get the calculation for your products in writing. Do not brief “reduced” as a number you invented.
The commitments also require SAP to clarify how a landscape can be split so different parts can sit with a third-party provider, with a different SAP support level, or with no support. They add termination paths in named situations, wider access to single-metric contracts, and an internal mechanism if a customer believes SAP is not honouring the deal. An independent monitoring trustee oversees compliance.
SAP’s 9 July statement said its maintenance practices were aligned with industry standards. It drew a hard line: the decision “relates solely to on-premise maintenance policies and does not concern SAP’s cloud offerings.” It also cited more transparent policies and targeted flexibility for exceptional shelfware situations.
The commitments did not move the clock
Do not let SAP frame this as whether you want more choice while you modernize at your own pace. Choice on a brochure is not a license position. The right question is narrower: which of your systems are on-prem and in scope, what leaving SAP support and returning would cost now that reinstatement is gone, and what the back-maintenance cap actually means on your paper.
The old mechanic was a one-way door. You left SAP support. Coming back meant a reinstatement fee plus back-maintenance for the time you were away. That made third-party support expensive to try and expensive to reverse. Abolition is the clean half of the deal. The cap is the half you must price.
The 2027 and 2030 dates did not move. SAP Note 2881788 and the Product Availability Matrix still put mainstream maintenance for Business Suite 7 / ECC 6.0 (EhP 6–8) at 31 December 2027, with optional extended maintenance through 31 December 2030 at two extra percentage points on the fee. That is not the back-maintenance cap. Do not mash them together. One is the price of extended vendor cover. The other is the price of returning after a gap. They are different commercial objects.
Cloud is a third object. Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera used the close to warn against similar lock-in in digital markets. SAP used it to say cloud is out of scope. If your estate is a mix of on-prem ECC, already-moved S/4, and a cloud subscription, only the on-prem maintenance policies sit inside these commitments. Brief the file you actually have. The End of Ownership is the Cloud ERP Private / RISE file: a different commercial object from this Commission close.
If that split feels messy, the problem is not your team’s maturity. Traditional SAM collects installs and answers slowly. Nobody built a report called “what does abolition of reinstatement fees do to our ECC position.” The gap is interpretation work.
The leave-and-return file is the decision, not the S/4 slide
Picture your procurement director the week after legal forwards the Commission press release. The CIO wants to know whether you can shop third-party support without being locked out of SAP later. Finance wants a stay-versus-leave number. The account team will walk in with a support quote and a modernization story.
If SAM needs three weeks to recast on-prem versus cloud, ECC versus already-moved, systems that can leave versus systems that cannot, the headline becomes the file. You will spend the meeting explaining last year’s invoice instead of saying what you would still buy if reinstatement had never been the lock.
Shelfware is the quiet line in SAP’s statement. “Targeted flexibility for exceptional shelfware situations” is not a cost optimization credit you can assume. It is a phrase. Ask where it applies, on which unused engines, and what “exceptional” means on your contract.
What to get in writing before you shop
Do this in the next thirty days, as a decision pack, not a project.
| What you produce | Why it has to be on paper |
|---|---|
| On-prem versus cloud map | The commitments cover on-prem maintenance only. Cloud is out. If you cannot split them, you will brief the wrong estate. |
| Systems on the 2027 / 2030 clock | Mainstream ends 31 December 2027. Extended runs to 31 December 2030 at two extra percentage points. The clock did not move. |
| Leave-and-return cost on this contract | Reinstatement is waived. Back-maintenance is capped at the lower of 50 percent of the gap or six months. Get SAP’s calculation for your products, in writing. |
| Conditions for third-party support and mixed SAP levels | SAP agreed to clarify them. Clarified is not automatic. Ask which systems can sit with a third party, which can take a different SAP support level, and what breaks the path back. |
| Shelfware, named | SAP cited targeted flexibility for exceptional shelfware situations. Name the unused engines and ask whether they qualify. |
Then say, in one page, whether the next conversation is a third-party trial with a documented return path, extended SAP cover at the two-point premium, or a migration you were already going to fund. A Commission close without that page is a document. A live position you can brief in fifteen minutes is a decision input.
Can a non-specialist walk the CIO through that pack today? If the answer is no, you do not have a SAP support-commitments position. You have a maintenance invoice and a deadline.
The decision layer, not another support spreadsheet
You already have a maintenance invoice, an install list, and a migration plan. LCM is the contracts-versus-deployments view, not another support spreadsheet. The gap is not another inventory. The gap is turning that estate into a decision: which systems are on-prem and in scope, what leaving and returning costs now, and what should happen before December 2027. LICENSEWARE sits on the inventory and ITSM tools you already run. It is not a rip-and-replace SAM suite. It is a decision layer: what matters, why it matters now, what should happen next.
If you are heading into a SAP support conversation this year and your current tools still need three weeks to turn “we run ECC” into on-prem versus cloud, leave-and-return versus extended, in-scope versus out, book a Software Intelligence Review. You can also start on the free plan and run the analysis on your own data.
The question to walk in with
Do not let SAP frame this as more freedom while you modernize at your own pace. The right question is: which of our systems sit on the on-prem paper these commitments cover, what does leave-and-return cost now that reinstatement is gone, what does the back-maintenance cap mean in writing, and what would we still buy if the 2027 clock had never been the argument. That is a data question, not a sales question.
The vendor will walk in with a number. The only question is whether you have yours first: current, defensible, and tied to the contract in front of you.
