Global Survey Reveals 85 Percent of SAP Licensees Not Committed to New S/4HANA

Lack of Strong Business Case, Unclear ROI, Unproven Platform, Early Stage Product Cited as Top Reasons;
Only Three Percent of Respondents Using Any HANA In Their Environments Today

Orlando, Fla. – SAPPHIRE NOW 2015 Conference – Rimini Street, Inc., the leading global independent provider of enterprise software support services for SAP SE’s (NYSE:SAP) Business Suite and BusinessObjects software and Oracle Corporation’s (NYSE:ORCL) Siebel, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, E-Business Suite, Oracle Database, Oracle Middleware, Hyperion and Oracle Retail, today revealed the key findings from a recent global survey conducted by Rimini Street to help SAP licensees benefit from peer insights on how other companies are responding to the many questions and challenges surrounding SAP’s newly announced S/4HANA product with mandatory re-platforming to HANA. As detailed in the full survey report, these key findings and related recommendations are critical given that the development of the new S/4HANA release is expected to require more than 400 million lines of code to be re-written and a project labor effort potentially near full re-implementation and migration for many existing SAP software users.

More than 230 SAP Business Suite applications licensees representing a variety of industries, roles, company sizes and regions participated in a recent survey conducted by Rimini Street. Survey respondents spanned North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.

Key Survey Findings

According to the survey results, 85 percent of respondents are not committed to SAP’s new S/4HANA, with 68 percent citing lack of business case/unclear ROI as the top factor for their lack of commitment. Seventy-two percent of respondents are choosing to remain on their existing, stable and mature SAP ECC 6.0 platform, with only three percent reporting they are using HANA today. The survey also revealed 75 percent of respondents running the ECC 6.0 platform are still leveraging SAP Enhancement Pack 6, or earlier releases, rather than the most current Enhancement Pack 7.

“Rimini Street conducted this survey to better understand the primary application strategies of SAP licensees around the world,” said David Rowe, Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer, Rimini Street. “The results of this survey are consistent with analyst commentary and other industry surveys, and a clear theme has emerged — survey respondents cited HANA and S/4HANA as unproven, speculative products with little or no compelling business case in return for the cost and risk of implementation. Pursuing HANA and S/4HANA strategies at this time create unnecessary risk at significant expense with no clear business benefit, according to many respondents.”

Majority of SAP Licensees Not Committed to S/4HANA

Only 14 percent of SAP licensees surveyed have committed to using S/4HANA, if and when it becomes available in the future, and the vast majority said “no” (33%) or “maybe” (52%) to migrating to, re-implementing and running SAP S/4HANA applications. Respondents cited the following top reasons for foregoing S/4HANA: “no strong business case/unclear ROI” (68%); “unproven, early stage product” (44%); and “higher migration and re-implementation costs” (36%).

Most SAP Licensees Use Proven SAP 4.x and ECC 6.0 Applications to Run Business

Respondents are choosing to remain on their existing stable and mature SAP applications platforms instead of moving to S/4HANA. The number one reason for not replacing current mature, proven application platforms was because “current version meets business needs” (43%). Other top reasons included “cost prohibitive to upgrade” (37%) and “move to new application later” (23%).

Three-Quarters of Respondents Not on Most Current Enhancement Pack Release

Seventy-five percent of respondents running ECC 6.0 said they are on Enhancement Pack 6, or earlier releases, instead of the most current Enhancement Pack 7. “Current version meets business needs” (72%); “cost prohibitive to upgrade” (35%); and “not enough new and valuable functionality” (30%) were cited as the top three reasons.

SAP Licensees Challenged with High Cost of SAP Support and Low Value Received

Licensees responded that SAP support and maintenance is: “too expensive for support calls” (46%); “too expensive for functionality delivered” (37%); and offers “no support for customizations” (35%).

“As SAP scrambles to try and show it is a relevant player in the cloud market with its S/4HANA product direction, this survey confirms that SAP licensees plan to continue driving significant value out of their long-running, stable and mature SAP applications that power the mission-critical business operations for tens of thousands of organizations around the world,” added Rowe. “Rimini Street has made a commitment to helping companies navigate today’s challenging and changing software landscape through services that begin with Rimini Street’s Innovation and Roadmap Services and continue with a support model that enables organizations to get the most value from their current SAP application investments, while also freeing up funds to drive other needed innovations. Rimini Street helps SAP licensees innovate now without the risk of waiting indefinitely for announced products which still need to be developed before coming to market, then will take needed time to mature, and may or may not actually deliver any value in the future.”

To download a copy of the survey executive summary, please visit: https://www.riministreet.com/sapreport2015.

About Rimini Street, Inc.

Rimini Street, Inc. (Nasdaq: RMNI) is a global provider of enterprise software products and services, the leading third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software products and a Salesforce partner. The Company offers premium, ultra-responsive and integrated application management and support services that enable enterprise software licensees to save significant costs, free up resources for innovation and achieve better business outcomes. To date, more than 3,500 Fortune 500, Fortune Global 100, midmarket, public sector and other organizations from a broad range of industries have relied on Rimini Street as their trusted application enterprise software products and services provider. To learn more, please visit https://www.riministreet.com, follow @riministreet on Twitter and find Rimini Street on Facebook and LinkedIn.

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