Responding to those concerns, SAP said in a written statement, “We recognize that transparency and confidence are critical for businesses navigating transformation. We’re actively delivering on these needs and making meaningful progress through initiatives like the RISE with SAP Migration and Modernization program. Our goal is to equip every organization with the tools and insight to make informed decisions and realize tangible value from their transformation journey.”
However, a major issue facing prospective S/4HANA customers in the cloud, said Info-Tech Research Group advisory fellow Scott Bickley, is that “SAP is constantly moving the goalposts with regard to product nomenclature, feature mix, licensing practices, and price obscurity.” DSAG properly calls this out, he said, while simultaneously endorsing SAP’s cloud push.
“The issue here is how one can expect an enterprise to make a mission-critical decision around deployment models, which will incur a generational price tag for legacy ECC clients, without having clarity and transparency around the BOM [bill of materials] and line item pricing,” Bickley said. “SAP’s documentation provides only a high-level vantage point to where high-level functionality resides, and is always subject to change.”
