SAP Third-Party Support: Insights and Best Practices

Why SAP Support Costs Demand Scrutiny

SAP's standard support model charges approximately 22% of net licence value per year. For a large enterprise carrying £30 million in SAP licences, that is £6.6 million annually in support fees — before any professional services, upgrade projects, or infrastructure costs. Over a five-year horizon without negotiation or optimisation, support alone exceeds the original licence investment.

SAP bundles this under "SAP Enterprise Support," which covers access to SAP's support portal, security patches, legal and regulatory updates, and access to new product versions. In theory, it represents continuous improvement. In practice, many enterprises pay for capabilities they never use while receiving a level of support that does not meet their operational requirements.

Third-party maintenance providers entered this gap. By offering SAP support services at roughly 50% of SAP's fee — approximately 11% of net licence value — they deliver significant cost relief for organisations willing to accept the trade-offs. Understanding those trade-offs is the critical exercise before committing.

The Leading Third-Party Providers

Rimini Street

Rimini Street is the largest independent provider of enterprise software support, covering SAP ECC, S/4HANA, Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, and other platforms. For SAP customers, Rimini Street provides customised support including custom code coverage, interoperability patches, security updates, and a global tax and regulatory research team that delivers updates for payroll, financial reporting, and compliance obligations across more than 100 countries.

Rimini Street has committed to supporting SAP ECC 6.0 and S/4HANA releases through 2040, which is significant for organisations that want certainty beyond SAP's own maintenance timelines. Their service model is built around a primary support engineer — a named individual who knows the client's specific configuration — rather than the ticket-queue model that characterises SAP's support operation.

Rimini Street reports client savings of 50% on annual support fees, with some organisations achieving up to 90% in total support cost reduction when avoiding SAP-driven upgrade projects during the same period. These figures require scrutiny — the 90% number includes avoided project costs, not just maintenance fee reduction — but the baseline saving of 50% on the maintenance line item is consistently observed across our client engagements.

Spinnaker Support

Spinnaker Support operates as a direct competitor to Rimini Street in the SAP support market, with particular strength in complex multi-system SAP environments and organisations with significant integration requirements. Spinnaker offers custom code support, interoperability services, and global tax and regulatory updates comparable to Rimini Street.

Spinnaker positions itself on service depth and engineering quality. In Gartner Peer Insights ratings, both providers score comparably — Rimini Street at 4.8 stars and Spinnaker at 4.7 stars — suggesting that service quality is broadly equivalent and the differentiating factors are commercial terms, account team responsiveness, and specific technical capabilities for the client's SAP landscape.

What You Gain — and What You Give Up

The Gains

Cost reduction of approximately 50%: The most immediate benefit is financial. An enterprise paying £4 million annually to SAP for support can expect to reduce that to approximately £2 million with a third-party provider, freeing £2 million per year for reinvestment in transformation initiatives or operating cost reduction.

Migration timeline control: Under SAP support, enterprises face implicit pressure to migrate to S/4HANA to remain on supported software. With third-party support covering ECC through 2040, the migration decision is genuinely driven by business readiness rather than vendor-imposed deadlines. This is valuable for organisations with complex implementations, heavily customised systems, or competing transformation priorities.

Custom code coverage: SAP's standard support does not cover customisations. Third-party providers support the entire system as deployed, including modifications, custom reports, and Z-code. This eliminates a structural gap in SAP's own support model.

Dedicated support engineering: Both Rimini Street and Spinnaker provide named support engineers with deep knowledge of the client's specific environment. Response quality is consistently rated higher than SAP's own support by clients who have made the transition.

The Trade-Offs

No access to new SAP releases: Third-party support freezes the organisation on its current SAP software version. New SAP innovations, including S/4HANA functional enhancements, Fiori UI improvements, and integration capabilities with SAP BTP, are not available through third-party maintenance. For organisations planning to use SAP as their ERP platform long-term, this represents a genuine capability constraint.

No official SAP security patches: Third-party providers create custom fixes and mitigations for security vulnerabilities, but these are not SAP-issued patches. Organisations with strict security compliance requirements — particularly those subject to financial services regulation or critical infrastructure obligations — must evaluate whether this approach meets their information security policies.

SAP audit exposure persists: Ending SAP support does not remove SAP's right to audit licence compliance. Your licence agreement remains in force, and SAP typically increases audit frequency for organisations that terminate maintenance. Licence compliance must be maintained meticulously throughout the third-party support period. The DDLC (Digital Document and Licence Compliance) metric, which SAP uses to measure indirect access exposure, applies regardless of who provides your support.

Return-to-SAP costs: If the organisation decides to return to SAP support — for example, upon migrating to S/4HANA — SAP may require payment of back fees for the lapsed period or the purchase of new licences to access current versions. Contract terms vary significantly and must be assessed before any transition.

The DDLC Dimension

The DDLC (Digital Document and Licence Compliance) metric is SAP's primary mechanism for measuring indirect access under the Digital Access licensing model. DDLC counts the number of digital documents — sales orders, purchase orders, delivery notes, and similar transaction records — created in SAP by third-party systems that integrate with SAP without a direct named user licence.

Third-party maintenance does not change the DDLC measurement or SAP's right to enforce Digital Access compliance. Enterprises that switch to Rimini Street or Spinnaker Support while operating with ungoverned third-party system integrations remain exposed to indirect access claims. We have seen SAP use the maintenance termination as a trigger to accelerate audit activity against former customers.

Before transitioning to third-party support, conduct a comprehensive DDLC exposure assessment. Quantify the number of digital documents created by each external system integration, determine whether those systems require Digital Access licences, and negotiate or document the licence position before providing SAP with notice of maintenance termination.

When Third-Party Support Makes Strategic Sense

Third-party support is not appropriate for every organisation. There are specific scenarios where the decision is clearly advantageous and others where it creates strategic complications.

Scenarios Where It Works Well

ECC stabilisation with delayed S/4HANA timeline: If the organisation has determined that S/4HANA migration is more than four years away — due to complexity, competing priorities, or a pending merger — third-party support preserves cost optionality while the transformation roadmap is established. The savings over a four-year period typically fund significant elements of the eventual migration project.

Business units under divestiture: If a portion of the SAP estate will be divested within 24 to 36 months, maintaining SAP support for those systems through the divestiture period is unnecessary cost. Third-party support provides compliant maintenance at lower cost while the divestiture is completed.

Organisations with stable, well-governed ECC environments: Enterprises that have invested in strong SAP licence governance, maintain clean authorisation structures, and have limited third-party integration exposure are best positioned to benefit from third-party support without introducing material compliance risk.

Scenarios Where Caution Is Warranted

S/4HANA migration within 24 months: If the organisation is actively planning an S/4HANA migration, switching to third-party support may create contractual friction upon return. The commercial and timeline complexity of re-engaging SAP support at the point of migration needs to be modelled explicitly before committing.

High indirect access exposure: Organisations with large numbers of digital documents generated by third-party system integrations face elevated DDLC risk. If the compliance position is not clean before transitioning, the audit exposure may exceed the maintenance cost savings.

Regulated industries with strict patch requirements: Financial services, critical infrastructure, and defence sectors may have regulatory obligations that require vendor-issued security patches. These organisations must obtain a legal and compliance opinion on whether third-party security fixes satisfy their regulatory requirements.

Best Practices for the Transition

1. Conduct a Complete Licence and Compliance Audit First

Before engaging third-party providers, audit the full SAP licence position. Identify any compliance gaps, including unauthorised user types, DDLC exposure from indirect access, and engine metrics that may be understated. Resolving these before providing SAP with notice prevents SAP from using the transition as an audit trigger opportunity.

2. Align Termination with Contract Renewal

SAP support contracts typically require 90 days' notice before the contract expiration date. Missing this window results in automatic renewal at SAP's current rates. Build the transition timeline around the maintenance contract renewal date, not the transformation roadmap, to avoid unnecessary cost.

3. Run a Competitive RFP

Do not accept the first commercial proposal from a single third-party provider. Run a structured RFP covering both Rimini Street and Spinnaker Support, and compare scope, service levels, tax and regulatory coverage for your specific geographies, custom code support depth, and security vulnerability response commitments. Commercial terms between the two providers can differ by 15 to 25% for comparable contracts.

4. Negotiate Return-to-SAP Terms Before Leaving

Before terminating SAP support, negotiate and document the terms under which the organisation can return to SAP support in the future. Specifically, secure written confirmation of whether SAP will require back-fee payments, and at what rate, as a condition of re-engagement. Some clients successfully negotiate a fixed-term waiver of back fees in exchange for a commitment to return to SAP support upon S/4HANA migration.

5. Monitor the DDLC Position Continuously

Establish a regular DDLC monitoring cadence — at minimum annually — to track indirect access exposure as the IT landscape evolves. New integrations, API connections, and automated processes can generate DDLC exposure without the procurement team being aware. SAP's digital access measurement tools can be used proactively to maintain visibility of the position.

The 2027 ECC Deadline Context

SAP's mainstream maintenance for ECC 6.0 ends in 2027. Extended support is available through 2030, typically at an additional premium of 2% on the maintenance fee, which would increase annual support from approximately 22% to approximately 24% of net licence value. After 2030, SAP will not provide any mainstream maintenance for ECC.

Rimini Street has extended its support commitment for SAP ECC 6.0 through 2040, which means organisations that switch to third-party maintenance now are not constrained by SAP's 2027 deadline in the same way as customers on SAP support. This is a genuine strategic advantage for complex organisations that cannot complete an S/4HANA migration before 2027 without cutting corners on scope or quality.

However, the 2027 context also increases SAP's incentive to audit licence compliance among organisations that have terminated maintenance. SAP typically views customers approaching end of support as prospects for S/4HANA conversions and may use audit activity to create urgency and commercial leverage. Maintaining rigorous licence compliance is therefore more important as the 2027 deadline approaches, not less.