RISE changes who runs your SAP platform. It does not change who carries the liability.
RISE with SAP bundles S/4HANA Cloud private edition, infrastructure, and base run services into one subscription priced on Full Use Equivalents. It is a genuine win for estates that already wanted to stop operating SAP themselves, and an expensive detour for estates chasing a headline discount. The deciding factor is almost never the number on the slide: it is the FUE conversion, the honest baseline cost, and whether standardisation is actually on the table.
Prepared by Redress Compliance · August 10, 2026 · SAP advisory. Based on 25 to 35 RISE evaluations benchmarked, 2024 to 2025.
Executive summary
The FUE conversion is the single most important number, and first proposals ran 10 to 25 percent high. RISE prices on Full Use Equivalents, a weighted unit that collapses your existing named user categories at defined ratios, and the resulting count drives the subscription for the whole term.
In our file the initial FUE proposal sat 10 to 25 percent above what a clean user reclassification supported, a median of roughly 18 percent.
An inflated starting count locks an inflated subscription in place, so reclassify your users first and validate SAP's conversion against that, never the reverse.
Roughly half of the evaluations showed RISE raising five year cost once the real baseline was counted.
RISE replaces several cost lines with one subscription, so a fair comparison has to rebuild your current spend across the same scope: software maintenance, infrastructure, and the labour you already spend operating the platform.
About half of estates could not state their current infrastructure and Basis cost at all, which made the comparison guesswork.
Where the baseline was built properly, RISE raised the five year total in about half of cases, usually because internal run labour was already sunk and hyperscaler credits were lost in the move.
RISE does not remove indirect access exposure, and more than half of buyers assumed it did. Digital access liability follows your integrations regardless of who hosts the platform, so it travels straight across into the new agreement.
Settle the document count and the pricing before signing, because an unresolved exposure carried into a longer commitment is negotiated later from a much weaker position. This is the most expensive misconception in the RISE conversation, and it is rarely corrected by the party presenting the offer.
The decision is three questions, and none of them is the discount. Who should run the system, how standardised can you actually be, and what is your honest current run cost. If you cannot operate the platform well today and want out of that business, RISE is attractive.
If your Basis team is a genuine strength and your hyperscaler deal is good, RISE usually adds cost. Answer all three before the account team frames them for you, then judge the offer against your own five year baseline rather than against the slide.
The fit test by estate profile
| Estate profile | RISE fit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Early S/4HANA, wants SAP to operate | Strong | Standardisation and outsourced operations align with the model |
| Heavily customised ECC, strong Basis team | Weak | Custom code and internal skills lose value under managed operations |
| Existing hyperscaler commitment | Mixed | Infrastructure overlap can double pay unless credits are negotiated |
| Regulated data residency needs | Conditional | Achievable, but it narrows region and provider choice |
Be precise about what the subscription covers, because the boundary is where the budget surprises live. Included: S/4HANA private edition software, base infrastructure, and SAP run services.
Often extra: premium engagement, additional environments, and many line of business cloud products, each of which arrives as a separate line once the project is underway.
Still yours regardless: functional support, change management, integrations, and custom code, which is precisely the work that dominates most SAP operating budgets. A comparison that treats the RISE number as covering everything you spend today will always flatter the offer.
The user count mechanics sit in the FUE licensing guide.
Building the five year baseline before the first meeting
- Rebuild your current spend across the same scope RISE replaces: software maintenance, infrastructure, and the labour you actually spend operating the platform, stated precisely rather than estimated.
- Project both paths across five years, including renewal year uplifts, because the RISE reprice mechanism is where a competitive year one turns into an uncompetitive year four.
- Count the hyperscaler credits you would lose, since infrastructure overlap can mean paying twice unless the credits are negotiated into the deal explicitly.
- Run a clean named user reclassification first, then validate SAP's FUE conversion against it, because the proposals in our file ran 10 to 25 percent above what the reclassification supported.
- Read the commitments in the agreement, not the deck. Service levels, exit terms, and price protection live in the contract. The audit posture that travels with you is covered in the SAP audit survival guide.
RISE with SAP against on premises TCO
Where RISE genuinely wins, where it raises five year cost, the FUE conversion arithmetic, and the offsets to negotiate before you commit.
Get the white paper →The lock in, and the offsets to negotiate up front
RISE concentrates software, infrastructure, and operations with a single vendor, which raises switching cost by design. The risk is real and it is manageable, but only if the offsets are negotiated before signature rather than raised at the first renewal. Four belong on the list.
Price protection: cap the renewal uplift and the FUE reprice mechanism in writing, because an uncapped reprice against a metric SAP controls is the whole commercial risk of the model in one clause.
Exit assistance: secure defined data extraction and transition support at term end, specified in the agreement rather than assumed as goodwill.
Indirect access: resolve the digital access exposure now, because the liability follows your integrations regardless of who hosts the platform, and carrying it unresolved into a longer commitment means negotiating it later with less leverage and more sunk cost.
Scope flexibility: keep the right to adjust FUE downward at defined points, not only upward, since every subscription metric is easy to grow and hard to shrink unless the paper says otherwise. Each of these is cheap to obtain while SAP wants the deal and expensive to obtain afterwards.
The digital access mechanics in full sit in the digital access guide.
- Percentile standing for your exact deal size and industry, from real closed transactions
- Scenario simulation before the call: test alternative terms and see the financial impact of each
- A negotiation playbook, talking points, and a two page executive brief on day one
What we saw across RISE evaluations, 2024 to 2025
The standard account team pitch is that RISE lowers total cost of ownership for almost every customer.
We disagree, and the disagreement is arithmetic rather than ideological: in roughly half the evaluations we benchmarked, RISE raised five year cost once the customer counted the internal run labour they already had and the hyperscaler credits they would lose.
How far the first FUE proposal sat above what a clean user reclassification supported, locking an inflated subscription in for the term.
Share of benchmarked evaluations where the five year total rose once internal run labour and lost hyperscaler credits were counted honestly.
Three patterns recurred: FUE conversion drift with initial proposals 10 to 25 percent above a clean reclassification, run cost confusion in about half of estates that could not state their current infrastructure and Basis spend.
And lock in surprise where more than half assumed RISE removed indirect access risk when the exposure carried straight across.
The buyer side move is to build your own five year baseline before the first RISE meeting and judge the offer against that number. RISE is a genuine win for some estates, but only the ones that honestly wanted to stop operating SAP themselves rather than the ones chasing a headline discount.
The wider library sits in the SAP practice.
Your first five moves
- Build a precise five year baseline of current software, infrastructure, and run labour before the first RISE meeting, because half of estates could not state that number and the comparison collapses without it.
- Run a clean named user reclassification and validate the FUE conversion against it, since first proposals ran 10 to 25 percent high and the count drives the subscription for the whole term.
- Answer the three decision questions honestly: who should run the system, how standardised you can actually become, and what your run cost really is. The discount only means something after those.
- Resolve indirect access exposure before the commitment, not after, because digital access liability follows your integrations regardless of who hosts the platform.
- Negotiate price protection, exit assistance, and downward FUE flexibility into the contract, then decide on the evidence and walk if RISE does not beat your baseline. The SAP practice runs the baseline and the negotiation with you.
Frequently asked questions
What is included in RISE with SAP?
RISE bundles S/4HANA Cloud private edition software, base cloud infrastructure, and SAP technical run services into one subscription priced on Full Use Equivalents. Premium engagement, additional environments, and many line of business cloud products are usually extra.
Functional support, change management, integrations, and custom code remain yours, and that is where most SAP operating budgets actually sit.
What is a Full Use Equivalent and why does it matter?
FUE is the weighted unit that replaces the old named user model, collapsing many named user categories at defined conversion ratios. It matters because the resulting count drives the subscription for the whole term.
In our file initial FUE proposals ran 10 to 25 percent above what a clean user reclassification supported, so validate the ratio against your own reclassification before signing.
Does RISE with SAP lower total cost of ownership?
For some estates, yes. In roughly half the evaluations we benchmarked it raised five year cost, once the customer counted the internal run labour they already had and the hyperscaler credits they would lose in the move.
The honest test is your own five year baseline across the same scope RISE replaces, projected with renewal year uplifts included.
Which estates are a poor fit for RISE?
Heavily customised ECC estates with a strong internal Basis team, because custom code and internal skills lose value under managed operations. Estates with an existing hyperscaler commitment are mixed, since infrastructure overlap can mean paying twice unless credits are negotiated.
Regulated data residency requirements are achievable but narrow the region and provider choice.
Does RISE remove indirect access liability?
No, and more than half of the buyers in our file assumed it did. Digital access liability follows your integrations regardless of how the platform is hosted, so the exposure travels straight across.
Settle the document count and pricing before signing, because carrying an unresolved exposure into a longer commitment means negotiating it later with less leverage.
What lock in risks does RISE create?
It concentrates software, infrastructure, and operations with one vendor, which raises switching cost by design.
The offsets are all negotiable up front and expensive afterwards: cap the renewal uplift and the FUE reprice mechanism in writing, secure defined data extraction and transition support at term end, resolve digital access, and keep the right to adjust FUE downward at defined points.
How should we compare RISE against our current estate?
Rebuild your current spend across exactly the scope RISE replaces, meaning software maintenance, infrastructure, and the labour you spend operating the platform, then project both paths across five years including the contractual uplift in the RISE renewal years.
A comparison that treats the RISE number as covering everything you spend today will always flatter the offer.
