RISE migration economics. Indirect access defense. S/4HANA conversion strategy. Audit defense. Renewal negotiation. 100 percent buyer side. No reseller margin. No partner status with SAP.
SAP customers in 2026 are running into the most concentrated commercial cycle in the publisher's history. The S/4HANA migration deadline anchors the calendar. RISE is the publisher's preferred destination. Indirect access enforcement has hardened. Audit posture has tightened. Third party support is on the table for many ECC customers. Every one of these moves carries a contract clause, a metric, and a precedent.
Our SAP practice exists to put a current 2026 buyer side playbook in front of the publisher's current 2026 sales playbook. Our partners come from inside SAP global account leadership and the Big Four SAP advisory market. The clause language and the escalation paths were once their day job. The playbook is the product.
We advise on every SAP commercial event that touches a global enterprise. The SAP stack is broad, the licensing metrics are inconsistent, and the migration commercial framework was rewritten as recently as last year. The work falls into six clusters.
RISE with SAP is the publisher's preferred destination for the S/4HANA migration. The commercial framework is fundamentally different from the on premise contract. FUE replaces named user. Cloud subscription replaces perpetual license plus maintenance. The conversion credit pool replaces the prior shelfware tail. The arithmetic is opaque. The default proposal is rarely optimal.
We run RISE engagements in four phases. Phase one is the pre migration license position review. Phase two is the FUE mapping exercise, where we translate the existing named user landscape into the FUE bands. Phase three is the conversion credit negotiation, including the unused entitlements that should anchor your credit pool. Phase four is the contract drafting, where the RISE specific clauses around bring your own infrastructure, hyperscaler choice, and exit rights need to be written into the agreement.
Selected outcomes are documented in our German automotive manufacturer case study and our manufacturing audit case study. The full RISE framework lives in our RISE negotiation white paper and the RISE migration readiness checklist.
S/4HANA conversion is not a single decision. The publisher's framework offers three destinations. S/4HANA on premise, S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition under RISE, and S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition under GROW. The right destination depends on the application footprint, customisation density, and the strategic posture of the IT estate.
Our S/4HANA practice covers conversion credit modeling across all three destinations, FUE band sizing, contract drafting, and the timing decisions that interact with the underlying ECC support contract. The full framework is set out in our S/4HANA licensing conversion article.
SAP's indirect access enforcement has hardened materially in the last twenty four months. The digital access document model is now the default commercial framework. Many enterprises sit on contractual exposure they have never measured. The publisher has the inventory. The buyer often does not.
Our indirect access practice runs three workstreams. First, the application interaction inventory. Second, the digital access document mapping exercise, which translates interface activity into commercial liability. Third, the contract drafting, where the digital access definitions and exclusions can be tightened materially before a renewal or a RISE migration. Read more in our indirect access white paper.
SAP audit posture has shifted toward proactive system measurement, indirect access enforcement, and digital access document audits. The mechanism is procedural and the response timing matters. Our audit practice covers the full notification through close out cycle. Vendor Shield subscribers route every SAP audit notification through our intake desk.
SAP support runs at twenty two percent of net license fees and the support framework is unchanged from a decade ago. For ECC customers who are not migrating to S/4HANA in the near term, third party support from Rimini Street or Spinnaker offers a material cost reduction with broadly equivalent maintenance and patching coverage. Our third party support practice covers the contract risk review, the transition timing relative to audit risk, and the negotiation with the support vendor. Read more in our SAP third party support service page.
Most SAP engagements run in one of three shapes. Project work tied to a single migration, audit, or renewal. Subscription cover under Vendor Shield. Embedded retainer for the duration of an S/4HANA migration program. The right shape depends on the migration timing, the audit risk, and your internal capacity.
The SAP estate breaks into specialized practice areas. Each one has its own framework, its own audit risk profile, and its own buyer side playbook. View any practice below for the full scope.
The RISE commercial framework decoded. FUE band mapping. Conversion credit arithmetic. Hyperscaler choice clauses. Exit rights drafting. Used in more than fifty live RISE engagements.
Eighty eight pages. PDF. No reseller fingerprints. Updated for the 2026 commercial cycle.
SAP framed the RISE migration as a fixed package. Redress reframed it as a contract negotiation. Forty percent off the proposed TCO and a phased migration path our board could actually approve.
We have run 500+ engagements across 11 publishers. Every engagement starts with one conversation.
RISE deal precedents, indirect access movements, S/4HANA migration economics, and audit posture signals.
