On 9 July the European Commission accepted binding SAP commitments: reinstatement fees abolished, back maintenance capped, landscape splitting, termination rights. Ten years, worldwide. The five changes, the cost math, and the 90 day playbook.
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On 9 July the European Commission accepted binding commitments that abolish SAP reinstatement fees, cap back maintenance at six months of half rate, legalize landscape splitting, and create termination rights for unused licences. Ten years, worldwide, enforceable. Daniel lays out the five changes, the cost math behind them, and the 90 day playbook.
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When did a regulator last hand you leverage over your largest software vendor? Because on July ninth, twenty twenty six, it happened, and most SAP customers have not yet realized what they are holding. The European Commission closed its antitrust investigation into SAP's on premise maintenance practices by accepting binding commitments. No fine, no infringement finding, but the commitments are enforceable for ten years, worldwide, across all on premise products, under an independent monitoring trustee.
If SAP breaches them, it faces fines of up to ten percent of global turnover. This is not a press release. It is a contract with the regulator, and you are the beneficiary.
Five things changed. First, reinstatement fees are abolished. The penalty for leaving SAP support and coming back is gone entirely. Second, back maintenance is capped: fifty percent of the fees for the time you were away, capped at six months, and waived entirely for products SAP no longer supports.
Third, landscape splitting is now a right. You can split your estate into separate commercial installations, each with its own support provider, its own support level, or no support at all. The all or nothing rule is dead. Fourth, new license purchases no longer restart your locked in term.
And fifth, you gain termination rights for unused licenses in defined situations: end stage products, failed implementations, insolvency, divestitures, and severe workforce reductions.
Why does this matter commercially? Maintenance at twenty two percent of license value is the largest recurring line in most SAP estates, and three walls protected it: you could not shed shelfware, you could not split the estate, and leaving was a one way door priced as a penalty. All three fell on the same day. And the timing is not neutral.
ECC mainstream maintenance ends in December twenty twenty seven. Only about thirty nine percent of roughly thirty five thousand ECC customers had bought S four HANA licenses as of late twenty twenty four. Third party support prices at roughly half SAP's rate, and the worst case cost of trying it is now six months of half rate back maintenance. The walk away position SAP's cloud first sales motion was designed to remove has just come back.
Put numbers on it. On a one hundred million dollar license estate, maintenance runs at twenty two million a year. Move the stable half of that estate to third party support at half rate, and the line drops by roughly five and a half million dollars, every year, without touching a single active system. Before July ninth, that model carried a punitive re entry cost that killed it in most board rooms.
Today the re entry cost is capped, known, and small. That is why this is a cost moment and not a legal footnote.
So here is the ninety day playbook. Sweep your shelfware: inventory zero use licenses, map them to the new termination categories, and file the terminations in writing. Every one you shed removes twenty two percent a year, forever. Model a split landscape: stable ECC modules to third party support at half cost, active systems stay with SAP, priced over five years with the corrected re entry math.
Re run every third party support business case you ever shelved, because every analysis written before July ninth used the wrong numbers. And take the walk away into every conversation, because a documented plan to move part of the estate changes the price of RISE, of S four HANA, of BTP, and of AI. SAP account teams know exactly what this settlement did to their position. Make sure they know that you know.
And paper everything. If an account team resists a right the Commission has guaranteed, escalate through SAP's clearing structure in writing, because the monitoring trustee and penalties of up to ten percent of global turnover sit behind every one of these commitments. A written record is what turns them from policy into leverage.
One warning before you build the plan. The protections cover on premise only. RISE, GROW, BTP and SaaS sit outside the settlement, and the moment a workload converts to cloud, the rights vanish. So negotiate contractual equivalents into every cloud agreement you sign, because the regulator will not do it for you there.
If you want this run as a ninety day project with an executive sponsor, that is exactly what we do. Redress Compliance works only for buyers, and on contingency we take twenty five percent of what we save you. Nothing saved, nothing paid.