Added Value for SAP

The art of modern fundraising is akin to masterful alchemy, in which mundane ABAP program code is transformed into a bubbling stream of cash. For existing SAP customers, a closer look reveals that the promise of digital transformation is actually a business minefield. With its strategic shift to the cloud, SAP has established a system that demotes ERP users from permanent owners of their software to paying tenants.

The foundation of this strategy is the so-called Full-Use-Equivalent (FUE) model. While in the old on-premises world of „SAP R/3,“ named-user licenses were purchased once (plus a maintenance fee) and then used as part of day-to-day operations, FUE forces cloud users into a subscription dependency. Anyone who isn’t careful during this license conversion—a “contract conversion”—will irrevocably lose their perpetual rights.

The financial appeal of SAP BTP becomes even more sophisticated through the Cloud Platform Enterprise Agreement (CPEA) or the newer BTP Enterprise Agreement (BTPEA). Under these agreements, existing SAP customers must purchase cloud credits in advance. The irony for ERP users is that unused credits expire at the end of the contract year—a commercial masterstroke. Meanwhile, if the quota is exceeded, the full, non-discounted list price becomes due, resulting in a “cloud bill shock.”.

SAP has now seamlessly applied this principle of „prepayment with an expiration date“ to the world of AI and Agentic AI: Anyone who wants to use the new AI features or the Joule assistant is encouraged to purchase AI Units or Capacity Units in a bundle. These, too, expire at the end of the year. In reality, according to an analysis by E3 Magazine, up to 99 percent of customers do not use these AI credits (Credits and Capacity Units) due to a lack of productive use cases, while SAP enjoys a risk-free cash flow.

Although the STAR service offered by SAP is marketed as an optimization tool, it actually poses a serious risk during remote audits because it automatically assigns unclassified authorization roles to the most expensive license type. (pmf)