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Strategy

SAP Support Strategy

SAP creates support programs to enrich and drive an innovative and consistent support experience across products and customer types.

Next-Generation Support

SAP is re-imagining support for the digital enterprise. Next-Generation Support is an approach which uses innovative tools and services to help you get assistance anytime, anywhere – from any device. Our goal is to help businesses, IT users, and partners to work more effectively with our software by simplifying solutions; providing readily accessible knowledge base tools; and offering direct access to support experts.

While Next-Generation Support is designed to speed incident resolution, it’s different from traditional support models because it goes beyond fixing existing issues. It also helps you prevent incidents before they happen with technical resources that are proactive and preemptive. And, to get the most out of your SAP products, Next-Generation Support also offers best practice guidance, and consultations with engineering experts.

Next-Generation Support focuses on three key areas, which include tools and services:

Self-Service & Incident Prevention

To help you quickly and easily get the answers that you need, Next-Generation Support has several comprehensive solutions:

  • SAP's knowledge base including Knowledge Base Articles (KBAs) using Google, Bing and Yandex searches (see demo), social media tools, and SAP Community forums
  • Guided Answers (see demo) which uses structured decision trees to empower you to find technical answers on your own, and other intelligent support tools like automated solution search.
  • Cloud Availability Center is a personalized dashboard with an at-a-glance view into the status of your cloud products
  • SAP Support Portal, your one stop shop for access to critical tasks as well as important updates on all support-related topics

Real-Time Interaction

For fast incident resolution and prevention, planning, or best practices, you can get help directly from SAP support experts:

Personalized, Context-Sensitive Support

With built-in support, SAP creates a seamless and intuitive support experience where you get the specific help that you need, exactly where and when you need it:

  • Built-in Support

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Related Information

Vision and Strategy

Real-Time Support

The Future of Support (Digitalist)

SAP ONE Support Program

Designed for flexibility and simplification of the customer experience, the SAP ONE Support program helps to deliver a harmonized and integrated support experience to companies of all sizes and across all deployment scenarios – in the cloud, on-premise or in hybrid scenarios.

The SAP ONE Support program is available through the SAP Enterprise Support and SAP Preferred Care offering. Should you have higher support needs you can continue to take advantage of the premium engagements portfolio, SAP ActiveEmbedded and SAP MaxAttention.

SAP ONE Support Launchpad

The SAP ONE Support Launchpad provides access to support resources in a single, intuitive interface.

Access the Launchpad

CALL-1-SAP

Call our global toll-free telephone number for contacting SAP support.

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SAP Maintenance & SAP Enterprise Support - Prolonged Commitments until 2025

As announced on October 14, 2014, SAP underlines its commitment to innovation for SAP Business Suite 7 applications and SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA by offering customers choice and a simple, non-disruptive route to the cloud. We will continue to deliver innovations for the on-premise versions of SAP Business Suite 7 and SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA. SAP Business Suite customers will benefit from state-of-the-art technologies and business processes. We will deliver such new developments through the SAP enhancement package approach, complemented with quarterly shipments, when and if available, that offer additional and easy ways to quickly deploy SAP innovations.

SAP is complementing its innovation commitment by prolonging mainstream maintenance and according commitments for SAP Enterprise Support pricing.

Mainstream Maintenance:

SAP will prolong mainstream maintenance until the end of 2025 for SAP Business Suite 7 core application releases including SAP ERP 6.0, SAP Customer Relationship Management 7.0, SAP Supply Chain Management 7.0, SAP Supplier Relationship Management 7.0, and SAP Business Suite powered by SAP HANA 2013.

SAP’s Release and Maintenance Strategy Details:

SAP Enterprise Support Pricing:

SAP prolongs the fix of the list price for SAP Enterprise Support for new purchases at a constant 22 percent until 2025 (previous commitment was until 2016); and prolongs commitment to not increase fees for already existing SAP Enterprise Support contracts beyond 22 percent until 2020 (previous commitment was also until 2016).

Prolonged Commitment Details:

This long-term maintenance and support perspective demonstrates our commitment to predictability and protection for your investments, giving you additional choice, flexibility, and time to develop your individual approach for innovations and the cloud.

Extension Policies

With the cloud extension and the on-premise extension model, we provide customers and partners flexibility to adapt to changing business requirements with existing on-premise SAP solutions.

SAP offers fast track to innovation using a flexible path to the cloud

Since introducing the cloud extension model in 2013 SAP has been helping customers transition their landscapes from an on-premise to a hybrid cloud strategy non-disruptively, including offerings from SAP companies like SAP Ariba and SAP SuccessFactors (see a list of eligible solutions).

Based on their existing investments in SAP software, customers can decide to reallocate elements of their installed on-premise solutions to the respective public cloud or private managed cloud solutions from SAP, replacing on-premise license and maintenance with public cloud or private managed cloud subscription. Such transactions assume an expanded investment with cloud solutions from SAP, given the substantial added value from this new hybrid scenario.

Consume cloud innovations at your own pace

SAP removes barriers and enables customers to drive speed-to-value and unlock opportunities to lower total cost of ownership, taking care that existing investments are protected and exploring new options with innovative cloud solutions from SAP at their own pace.

The hybrid solution can be fully integrated offering seamless delivery and support as well as full control over the application landscape, including on-premise and cloud applications. With this integrated approach, customers gain the flexibility, choice and efficiencies needed to innovate for growth across their entire business in the cloud.

The cloud extension model helps companies of any size create entirely new experiences for their customers, empower employees at scale, optimize the use of resources and unlock value for their business.

SAP believes that every customer has a different approach to adopt these cloud innovations based on unique business requirements. This cloud extension model is an optional model that flexibly supports many different entry points for a cloud strategy.

For more information, please visit the SAP Newsroom or download one of the following assets:

Cloud Extension Model Rules

Private Managed Cloud

This document describes the key elements of the cloud extension model related to SAP HANA®, SAP HANA® Applications and the SAP Business Suite on SAP HANA® subscription models deployed on SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud

Public Cloud

This document describes the key elements of the cloud extension model related to public cloud offerings from SAP companies Ariba and SuccessFactors

List of Public Cloud Solutions

List of public SAP Cloud solutions, such as Ariba, or SuccessFactors, in scope of the cloud extension model

Customer Examples

Examples of recent cases where SAP customers extended their SAP on-premise landscapes with SAP Cloud solutions, also highlighting the key business rationales.

Customers and partners who have questions based on their individual contracts are encouraged to contact their respective SAP account team or local SAP representative for an assessment of their current license contracts.

Flexibility and Choice for changing business requirements SAP introduces On Premise Extension Model

With the on-premise extension model SAP provides customers and partners with the same flexibility and choice to adapt to their changing business requirements based on their existing on-premise SAP solutions. SAP is proactively redefining how customer application landscapes can be enhanced and modernized.

Customers can decide to evolve their existing on-premise landscape with other solutions from the SAP on-premise portfolio. Customers can replace existing on-premise licenses and maintenance with selected solutions from SAPs innovative on-premise portfolio. For example, customers can reallocate investments into the future of real-time businesses based on in-memory computing with SAP S/4HANA®.

The on-premise extension model requires the new maintenance resulting from the reallocation to, at a minimum, remain the same.

This model supports customers in extending their SAP on-premise application landscape into business processes where additional coverage with SAP’s innovations helps maximizing the value from the investment in SAP. Customers can leverage this model to determine which on-premise solutions from SAP´s innovation portfolio fit best with their business needs.

Additionally, customers and partners still have the opportunity for enhanced value from hybrid cloud / on-premise solutions, where only SAP can deliver end-to-end seamless, secure and reliable business processes and hybrid support based on SAP ONE Support program. SAP ensures customers have flexibility and choice to direct investments to the point of maximum return and to adopt the latest SAP innovations at their own pace.

With the on-premise extension model, SAP shows clear responsiveness to customer demands for having the opportunity to choose between cloud, on-premise and hybrid solutions with high flexibility.

For more information, please see the following document:

On-Premise Extension Model Rules

This document describes the key elements of the on-premise extension model

Customers and partners who have questions based on their individual contracts are encouraged to contact their respective SAP account team or local SAP representative.

Requests outside Cloud or On-Premise Extension

Customers that are not looking to realize the opportunities from the additional flexibility and innovation offered through the cloud and on-premise extension models - can abandon usage rights of certain existing software licenses and request the corresponding maintenance termination without purchasing new SAP on-premise or SAP Cloud solutions.

Such a request will lead to a rediscounting of the customers’ individual maintenance base for the product family in which the reduction is requested. This will span across all contracts in which the product family is included.

This re-discounting will be done based on volume list price discounts only. For further information please refer to your SAP Account Executive.

For more information, please see the following document:

Other requests outside cloud and on-premise extension models

This document describes the key elements for other requests out side cloud and on-premise extension models

SAP cannot predict the economic attractiveness of this model, as original contract terms may vary substantially.
Customers will need to work directly with their SAP account team to assess this option.