SAP runs the back-office software for a huge share of the world's large companies: finance, procurement, supply chain, HR. If your company uses SAP, you almost certainly pay SAP an annual maintenance fee, and until this week, you had almost no ability to change that.
The fee in question is set at 22% of the original licence value, every year, indefinitely. For a company that spent €10 million on SAP licences, that is €2.2 million per year, whether you use the support or not. One analyst described the fee as "a significant and often contentious drain on IT budgets" where "beyond critical security patches, this expensive service often goes largely unused."
The European Commission opened a formal investigation in September 2025, concerned that SAP was forcing customers to buy support exclusively from SAP, at SAP's prices, with no ability to reduce or reassign coverage even for software they no longer use actively. This week, the Commission concluded its investigation with a set of binding commitments from SAP.
Under the new rules, SAP customers can split their software environment into separate sections and choose a different support supplier for each one. They can also opt for lower support tiers or none at all for certain parts. Third-party providers like Rimini Street and Spinnaker Support typically charge around 10 to 12% of licence value annually, compared to SAP's 22%. For a large operation, that gap runs into millions per year.
The catch is that the deal covers only on-premises software: systems a company runs on its own servers. SAP's cloud products are untouched by these commitments. And this is where the story gets complicated.
SAP launched its Business AI Platform and Autonomous Suite in May 2026. These products bring AI-powered automation to finance, supply chain, procurement, and HR workflows. One example: an AI tool that compresses a month-end financial close process from weeks to days. The AI features include over 200 software agents working across business functions, and the system is built on partnerships with Anthropic, Google Cloud, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services.
All of it is cloud-only. SAP has been explicit that new AI capabilities will not be available to customers who stay on on-premises software. So the EU has cracked open the door to cheaper support for the old systems, just as SAP has made its most compelling new capabilities available only to those who leave those old systems behind.
This creates a genuine decision point for any business still running SAP on-premises. Staying put now carries lower mandatory support costs, which is a real improvement. But the AI automation that SAP is building, the kind that could genuinely reduce headcount in finance or procurement workflows, sits behind a cloud migration.
The lock-in risk is not going away; it is shifting. A recent IBM study of 1,000 senior executives found that 71% said switching their primary AI provider would be difficult if required today. Nearly all, 91%, said they do not fully understand their dependencies on AI vendors, models, and infrastructure. The concern is well founded: the deeper AI becomes embedded in daily operations, the harder it is to change course.
Regulators are paying attention. The EU Commission is also moving to designate Microsoft and Amazon as gatekeepers under its Digital Markets Act for their cloud products. The UK's Competition and Markets Authority is investigating Microsoft's business software market. The direction of travel is clear: governments want businesses to retain the ability to switch suppliers, and they are prepared to impose that through competition law.
For SAP customers outside Europe, the commitments are technically an EU matter, but binding decisions by the European Commission tend to set a practical standard globally. Companies renegotiating SAP contracts now have a stronger position than they did six months ago. For companies still running on-premises SAP, the immediate question is whether reduced support costs justify staying put longer, or whether the AI access available only on SAP's cloud makes migration more urgent.
Both answers are valid depending on the business. The change that matters is that for the first time in years, staying put is a real option with lower cost, not just a holding pattern with rising bills.