Following the European Commission's 2026 antitrust ruling, SAP on-premise customers can now split their landscape, reduce support costs, and explore third-party alternatives — with a capped cost of return.
Since 10 July 2026, SAP on-premise customers no longer have to keep their entire SAP estate under SAP support. Following a European Commission antitrust investigation, SAP has made binding commitments that apply worldwide for ten years. Customers can now split their landscape into separate Commercial Installations, each with its own SAP support level, a third-party provider, or no support at all.
The cost of returning to SAP has also changed fundamentally. The reinstatement fee is abolished, and back-maintenance is capped at the lower of 50% of missed fees or six months’ fees, so leaving SAP support for part of the estate is now a reversible decision. Targeted termination rights for end-of-life products, failed implementations, insolvency, workforce reductions and divestitures further reduce the risk of paying support on licences that are no longer used.
The opportunity comes with conditions. A split must result in technically independent installations, SAP considers core ERP and some integrated scenarios inseparable, and the process takes up to six months before quarterly and annual deadlines apply. Customers who map their landscape and licences now are best placed to reduce support costs from 2027 or 2028, and to use a credible alternative as leverage in their next negotiation with SAP.
For most of the past two decades, SAP on-premise maintenance worked as a single block. A customer either kept its entire SAP licence estate under one SAP support model, or it left SAP support altogether. Reducing support on part of the estate was possible only through narrow partial-termination policies, and returning to SAP after a period with a third-party provider meant paying a reinstatement fee on top of the full maintenance that would have been due in the intervening years.
In practice, this made a selective move to third-party support commercially unattractive. Customers that wanted to keep SAP support for their core ERP while moving stable, non-strategic systems elsewhere had no clean route to do so. The cost of coming back also weighed on any decision to leave, even temporarily.
The European Commission examined these practices in Case AT.40823 – SAP ERP aftermarket support services. Its preliminary assessment of 25 September 2025 raised competition concerns under Article 102 TFEU. SAP responded with a set of commitments under Article 9 of Regulation 1/2003, which the Commission accepted and made binding in July 2026. SAP gave these commitments without admitting any infringement, but they are legally binding for ten years, they apply to all SAP customers worldwide, and an independent Monitoring Trustee oversees compliance.
The Commission adopted its decision and took effect on 10 July 2026. They apply to all new and existing customers with SAP on-premise licences or on-premise maintenance, in every country, until July 2036. If SAP fails to honour them, the Commission can impose a fine of up to 10% of SAP’s worldwide turnover without having to prove an infringement first (EC press release IP/26/1554).
The package touches every lever that previously kept customers on full SAP support. The table below summarises the six areas and what each means in practice.
| Area | What Changes | Practical Effect for Customers |
|---|---|---|
| Landscape Split | Each Commercial Installation can have its own SAP support level, a different provider, or no support | Third-party support for part of the estate becomes a realistic option |
| Reinstatement | Reinstatement fee abolished; back-maintenance capped at the lower of 50% of missed fees or six months’ fees | Leaving SAP support is no longer a one-way door |
| Partial Termination | Licences and their maintenance can be terminated without re-discounting in four defined scenarios | Paying support on shelfware becomes avoidable in more situations |
| Initial Term | The initial term no longer restarts with each new licence purchase, nor with a landscape split | Customers regain a predictable annual exit point |
| Divestitures | Licences can be transferred to a buyer or terminated, without re-discounting or transfer fees | Carve-outs no longer leave stranded maintenance cost |
| Single Metric Contracts | Wider access above EUR 500,000 in ERP licence fees; up to 20% annual reduction of the maintenance base on underuse | An alternative pricing route for larger estates |
Two governance elements support these changes. SAP must run an internal clearing structure, staffed by people outside its sales organisation and not paid on on-premise licence or maintenance revenue, where customers can escalate cases in which they believe the commitments are not being applied. An independent Monitoring Trustee reports to the Commission and accepts complaints directly. The commitments also contain explicit non-circumvention and non-retaliation clauses: SAP may not reintroduce the waived fees through other charges, use misleading technical or commercial messaging to deter customers, or punish customers who exercise these rights through higher fees, degraded interoperability or slower service.
The remaining partial-termination scenarios are narrower than the headline suggests. Customers may terminate licences and the associated maintenance without losing their volume discount for products that are only in customer-specific maintenance (colloquially, end-of-life products), for implementations that failed demonstrably because of SAP, in insolvency, and after a workforce reduction of 10% or more over two years. In that last case, the reduction is limited to 10% of user licences once every two years, applied retroactively from 1 January 2025. Outside these scenarios, the existing On-premise Extension, Cloud Extension and Other Requests policies continue to apply.
The all-or-nothing principle has not disappeared; it has been narrowed. It now applies per Commercial Installation rather than to the entire SAP estate. All licences within one Commercial Installation must still sit under the same SAP support model, but different Commercial Installations may have different SAP support models, different support providers, or no support at all.
This makes the definition of a Commercial Installation the most important concept in the new framework. The commitments define it as a set of SAP software solutions and associated licences installed on a technical landscape with at least one production system, at least one corresponding non-production system for development, test or acceptance, and the supporting technical components such as database and operating system. Each Commercial Installation has its own installation number. In other words, a Commercial Installation is a technically complete, independently operable and auditable unit, not simply a group of licences on paper.
Several clarifications in the commitments remove the commercial risks that previously made a split unattractive. A landscape split does not in itself require new licences, provided the licences in each resulting Commercial Installation cover the actual use there. Where additional licences are needed, for example because users must work in both installations, the customer’s originally agreed discount structure applies at a minimum. Customers decide themselves how to allocate existing licences across installations, as long as every licence is allocated somewhere.
Neither a split nor the termination of SAP support for one installation triggers repricing of licences. SAP support fees are then calculated only on the licences in the installations that remain under SAP support. A split also does not start a new initial term, and an ongoing initial term does not block a split. For customers with Single Metric Contracts, the contract applies per Commercial Installation, so different installations can carry different metrics.
SAP must handle a split request within six months. Once SAP has confirmed that all conditions are met, the split takes effect on the next quarter start (1 January, 1 April, 1 July or 1 October) after the earlier of the six-month deadline or the completion of SAP’s processing. Combined with the usual three-month notice period before the end of a contract year, this means that customers aiming to change support arrangements per 1 January 2027 needed to start well before now; 1 January 2028 is the realistic target date for many organisations that have not yet begun.
In practice, a split runs through these stages:
The detailed procedural requirements sit in SAP’s Landscape Split Program document, which customers should review against their own contracts before submitting a request.
Carve-outs follow a simpler route. In a share or asset sale, the seller and buyer may agree freely how user licences are allocated, without first going through the Landscape Split Program. Licences that would have belonged to the divested business (but are not transferred) can be terminated, including their maintenance, without loss of volume discount and without the usual three-month notice; the termination takes effect at the next quarter start after closing.
Our SAP advisory team can map your installations, identify split opportunities, and build the business case.
The cost of coming back has been cut sharply, and that changes the risk profile of leaving. Under the previous terms, a customer returning to SAP support typically paid back-maintenance for the entire period without SAP support, plus a separate reinstatement fee. The Commission noted that in some cases this amounted to what the customer would have paid had it never left.
Under the commitments, SAP waives the reinstatement fee entirely. The back-maintenance payment for the Commercial Installation being reinstated is capped at the lower of two amounts: 50% of the support fees that would have been due during the off-support period, or six months of support fees. For products with a dedicated licence (a licence tied to a specific product version or release) that appear on SAP’s published list of outdated products (see “End-of-life products” below), back-maintenance is waived altogether. SAP updates that list at least once a year.
A simple example shows the effect. Take a Commercial Installation with an annual SAP support fee of EUR 1 million that has been with a third-party provider for three years.
| Scenario | Back-Maintenance | Reinstatement Fee | Total Cost of Return |
|---|---|---|---|
| Previous terms | EUR 3.0 million (full missed fees) | Charged on top | More than EUR 3.0 million |
| New terms | Lower of EUR 1.5 million (50%) and EUR 0.5 million (six months) | Waived | EUR 0.5 million |
Because the six-month cap applies whenever the off-support period exceeds one year, the maximum cost of a return is effectively fixed at half a year’s fees, however long the customer has been away. For shorter periods, the 50% rule gives the lower amount: after eight months off support, for instance, the customer pays four months’ fees.
This matters well beyond customers who actually plan to return. A capped and predictable exit cost turns third-party support from an irreversible decision into a reversible one, which lowers the bar for internal approval and strengthens the customer’s negotiating position with SAP. The detailed technical and commercial conditions are set out in SAP’s Support Reinstatement Program. The technical catch-up effort, rather than the fee, is likely to be the larger cost of a return after several years.
Whether a split is feasible depends on technical integration, and SAP has published guidance on where it draws that line. As part of its commitments, SAP added two lists to the commitments text published by the European Commission. The first names products and landscape types that SAP generally considers loosely integrated and therefore separable. The second is a non-binding guideline on what SAP considers too tightly integrated to separate. SAP stresses that both are recommendations rather than rigid rules, and that each landscape must be assessed on its own merits.
| Category | Examples from SAP’s Lists | SAP’s Position |
|---|---|---|
| Hub scenarios | Master Data Governance, Warehouse Management (EWM), Transportation Management, Central Finance, BPC, SAP Financial Consolidation, Treasury and Risk Management | Usually separable |
| Analytics and data warehousing | BusinessObjects (incl. Crystal Reports, Lumira, Xcelsius), SAP BW, SEM on BW, HANA as standalone datamart | Usually separable |
| Integration and platform | SAP PI/PO, SAP Exchange Server, Enterprise Portal, NetWeaver add-ons such as GTS, custom applications on NetWeaver or HANA | Usually separable; customer assesses custom builds |
| Standalone applications | SRM, Hybris Commerce on-premise, Business One, MII, PEO, IS-U and S/4HANA Utilities, HCM as separate ERP instance | Usually separable |
| Separate ERP instances | ERPs of different legal entities or divisions, regional ERPs with their own development and test systems, entities preparing for demerger, acquired companies, parallel ERPs | Usually separable, if each ERP runs independently |
| Core ERP | Finance, manufacturing, sales, service and logistics modules within one ERP | Not separable |
| Industry add-ons | IS-Oil, IS-Retail and similar extensions of the core | Not separable |
| Shared development | Several ERPs governed by one central development and test system | Not separable |
| APO and CRM with ERP | APO or CRM connected through SAP’s dedicated integration middleware | Not recommended; customer may proceed at own risk |
Two points deserve attention. First, the option to split ERPs by region answers an early criticism of the draft commitments, but it only applies where each region has its own complete set of development and test systems. A global template run from one central development system counts as integrated and cannot be split. Second, for APO and CRM, SAP explicitly confirms that the customer may split against its recommendation, at its own risk. Under the non-circumvention clause, SAP may not use misleading technical messaging to discourage such choices.
Two product lists determine where the most immediate savings sit. The first is SAP’s list of outdated products, also added to the commitments text, for which back-maintenance is waived entirely when the customer holds a dedicated licence; this list is referenced in SAP Note 3776551 and updated at least annually. Separately, products for which customer-specific maintenance is the only remaining maintenance phase can be terminated outright, licences and maintenance together, without loss of volume discount, on three months’ notice before the end of the contract year.
The Product Availability Matrix shows the maintenance phase of every SAP product and release, and is therefore the starting point for identifying these candidates. SAP ECC 6.0 and the wider Business Suite 7 are moving towards the end of mainstream maintenance in 2027, so the number of products that qualify will grow over the coming years. Customers should check the matrix against their installed base before each annual notice deadline.
The commitments do not make third-party support better or worse; they make it accessible for part of the estate and reversible. That changes the question customers should ask. It is no longer whether to move the entire SAP landscape away from SAP, but which Commercial Installations still justify SAP’s support fee.
Independent providers typically support a frozen release of the customer’s SAP software at a substantially lower annual fee, often combined with support for custom code, which SAP does not cover. The main providers for SAP each offer their own approach to security, which has become a central part of their proposition:
| Provider | Security Offering |
|---|---|
| Spinnaker Support | Spinnaker Shield |
| Rimini Street | Rimini Protect and related security services |
| Support Revolution | Revolutionary Defence |
The trade-offs are real and should be assessed per installation. A customer on third-party support no longer receives new SAP releases, enhancement packages or SAP security notes, and must rely on the provider’s own fixes and protective measures. Legal and regulatory changes, such as tax, payroll and e-invoicing updates, need a credible delivery model from the provider, which is particularly relevant for HCM and finance. Contractual hygiene matters too: customers must ensure they download and retain the software and documentation they are entitled to before support ends, and that their licence position is clean, since SAP retains its audit rights.
The new rules also cut the other way. Where SAP’s roadmap, such as a planned move to S/4HANA or RISE with SAP, depends on current SAP support for a given installation, a temporary move to a third party now carries a capped re-entry cost. That can be an attractive bridge for systems that will be retired or migrated within a few years. Any third-party proposal should still be reviewed thoroughly for compliance risks and contractual pitfalls before it is approved.
The new framework rewards customers who know their landscape in detail. The savings are available, but only to organisations that can show SAP which systems form a technically independent unit, which licences belong where, and what each installation actually needs in terms of support. The burden of proof sits largely with the customer, and SAP’s processing time of up to six months, plus the quarterly effective dates and annual notice periods, means that delay translates directly into another year of full fees.
We see four questions every on-premise SAP customer should answer in the coming months. The first is which parts of the landscape still benefit from SAP innovation and which are stable systems running on a frozen release. Hub scenarios, analytics, legacy portals and regional or divisional ERPs are often in the second group. The second is what the integration picture looks like against SAP’s guidance on separable and integrated systems, and whether any proposed split depends on a central development system or on APO or CRM middleware. The third is whether licences are allocated and used in a way that survives a split without unplanned purchases. The fourth is which of the targeted termination routes apply now: end-of-life products, workforce reductions, divestitures, or a Single Metric Contract for larger estates.
The value of these changes is not limited to customers who move to a third party. A documented, credible alternative per installation gives procurement real leverage in the next SAP negotiation, whether about support fees, an S/4HANA transition or a RISE with SAP proposal. The savings and the leverage can also help fund innovation, provided the support strategy stays aligned with the ERP roadmap.
Strivesource has supported organisations with complex SAP procurement programs since 2018. For the new SAP support framework, we work with clients in three stages. We start with a landscape and licence assessment that maps installations, licences, usage and integration points, and identifies the realistic split options and termination routes. We then build the business case per Commercial Installation, comparing SAP support levels, third-party proposals and self-support on cost, risk and roadmap fit, including the capped cost of a future return. Finally, we support the execution: the split request under the Landscape Split Program, the selection of and negotiation with third-party providers, and the negotiation with SAP itself, using the clearing structure where SAP’s application of the commitments falls short.
We would welcome a conversation about what the new rules could mean for your SAP estate.
This paper is general information and not legal advice. The contractual position of each customer depends on its own agreements with SAP.
Talk to one of our SAP advisory experts. We will assess your landscape, identify split opportunities, and outline the savings available under the new EU commitments.