This blog was originally published in December 2024 and updated in February 2026.
For SAP ECC and S/4HANA on-premises customers, SAP’s push for RISE with SAP has only intensified in 2026 as the company seeks to convert billions in maintenance revenue into subscription-based cloud contracts.
While this strategy may benefit SAP’s shareholders and financials, CIOs must ask a more fundamental question: Does RISE with SAP truly serve the best interests of their business?
Overall, the market appears to be voting no.
Surveys from DSAG and ASUG show that hybrid landscapes continue to dominate, while public cloud adoption remains limited. Persistent concerns around vendor lock-in, loss of customization, unpredictable costs[1] and operational risk continue to slow migration momentum. When an existing SAP system is stable, secure, performant, compliant and deeply customized, it becomes difficult to justify what is typically a multimillion-dollar migration project. For many organizations, the costs, risks and disruption simply outweigh the benefits.
SAP customers are proving that RISE with SAP is far from mandatory. Instead of disruptive, high-risk migrations, CIOs are prioritizing AI-driven innovation, cost optimization and architectural flexibility.
That may explain why more than half of ECC customers still haven’t migrated,[2] and why many are leapfrogging competitors by adopting third-party support and incremental modernization strategies instead.
10 reasons RISE with SAP may not be your best path forward
A RISE with SAP contract introduces financial, commercial, technical and operational risks. Understanding why — and what alternatives exist — can help you make better long-term decisions for your business and IT roadmap.
1. You’ll be forced to abandon a system that still works
Just because mainstream maintenance for ECC and older S/4HANA versions ends between 2025 and 2027, with costly extended maintenance options through 2030, doesn’t mean that those systems no longer serve their intended purpose or stopped delivering value.
Existing SAPs remain reliable systems of record, storing and reporting on well-defined data and transactions while you invest in systems of engagement and differentiation that integrate and interact with your core ERP.
With third-party support for SAP, you can extend your ERP life for the next 15 years and beyond, freeing capital and time to innovate without disruption.
2. Giving up ECC or S/4HANA perpetual licenses trades ownership for subscription risk
Ownership has strategic value. RISE requires customers to surrender perpetual licenses for subscription contracts, shifting CIOs from owners to renters.
This transition reduces your control while exposing you to unpredictable price hikes without reason and vendor leverage. In 2026, CIOs are increasingly rejecting vendor “landlord” dynamics in favor of strategies that preserve ownership, cost control and negotiating leverage.
3. Bundled RISE contracts limit optionality and flexibility
RISE bundles infrastructure, application management and support into a single contract. When software usage, operations and support are contractually inseparable, exiting or modifying any component becomes difficult.
This bundled approach can also limit future technology choices, making it harder to shift investment toward non-SAP solutions as business needs evolve.
See Understanding RISE Contracts – Beware of the Vendor Lock-In Bundle.
4. SAP inadvertently becomes your cloud relationship broker
Although RISE allows you to select your hyperscaler, SAP intermediates the relationship as part of a bundled agreement. This can complicate changes to service levels, scope or pricing as business requirements shift.
As a result, many CIOs prefer to manage hyperscaler relationships directly, retaining negotiating leverage, optimizing costs and maintaining access to best-in-class cloud capabilities without vendor interference.
5. Clean Core mandates erase customizations and differentiation
Brownfield migrations to SAP Cloud ERP Private allow some customizations to move forward, but since SAP can’t automatically install upgrades, you’ll be responsible for upgrading to stay supported. SAP Cloud ERP Public enforces Clean Core mandates that often require rewriting or eliminating custom code.
For many organizations, those customizations represent years of process optimization and competitive differentiation — advantages they are unwilling to sacrifice.
6. SAP BTP consumption charges add budget uncertainty
SAP Business Technology Platform underpins SAP’s cloud ecosystem, but its consumption-based pricing model remains unpredictable in 2026. Running customizations, automations and AI workloads on BTP can quickly escalate costs.
CIOs are responding by adopting third-party platforms and orchestration layers that deliver AI and automation without locking budgets into SAP’s pricing model.
7. Migrations cost more than money
SAP migrations are expensive — often costing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars — and can take anywhere from six months to several years to complete. Clean Core mandates, rework of customizations and unpredictable BTP consumption charges further increase risk.
With limited people, time and money, lengthy migrations can delay innovation, slow growth and erode competitive advantage — or worse yet, you could end up with a failed project.
Many organizations are opting for incremental modernization instead of “big-bang” migrations, applying AI and automation to an existing system for faster, lower-risk outcomes.
8. AI benefits are delayed until migration
SAP’s AI capabilities, including Joule and embedded generative AI, are tied to specific cloud versions. To access the AI features, you need to first complete a migration or upgrade to the minimum required version.
This forces CIOs to delay AI-driven value until after a complex transformation is complete, extending timelines and slowing innovation when speed matters most.
9. There’s a better way to future-proof your ERP
Innovation is accelerating faster than most organizations anticipated. New marketdisrupting capabilities are emerging from vendors that didn’t exist just a few years ago.
By avoiding vendor lock-in, CIOs preserve the flexibility to adopt the right technologies at the right time — rather than being constrained by long-term contracts.
10. Agentic AI innovation can be delivered faster with Rimini Street and ServiceNow
Traditional ERP is reaching its technical limits. Why take on a lengthy, expensive migration or replatforming project through RISE when ERP software is becoming obsolete?
In 2026, leading organizations are accelerating innovation with Agentic AI ERP — AI-driven, composable architectures that integrate seamlessly with existing ECC or S/4HANA systems. This approach enables rapid automation, intelligent workflows and advanced analytics without costly migrations, delivering measurable value in weeks, not years.
With the powerful combination of Rimini Street’s deep ERP expertise and the ServiceNow® AI Platform, organizations can deploy enterprise-wide AI, modern UX and processes and continuous innovation — at a fraction of the cost of RISE with SAP.
Rimini Agentic UX™ powered by ServiceNow makes innovation faster, better, cheaper
Rimini Street and ServiceNow have formed a strategic partnership to enable AI-driven automation and modernization across existing enterprise software estates with Rimini Agentic UX™ .
This offering allows organizations to:
- Orchestrate disparate systems into unified, intelligent digital workflows
- Receive unmatched support and managed services across the full ERP landscape
- Extend the life of existing systems while redirecting vendor support savings to innovation and scaling productivity
Rimini Agentic UX overlays an intelligent, AI-driven user engagement layer on top of existing ERP systems and releases. Organizations can leverage Rimini Agentic UX™ Solutions— a selection of 20+ prebuilt business process solution templates rapidly deployed onto existing enterprise platforms — to innovate in weeks, not years. The result is faster automation, smarter workflows and meaningful transformation — all while retaining the systems organizations already trust.
For SAP customers, this is more than an alternative to RISE. It’s a path to measurable outcomes today, while preserving strategic flexibility for tomorrow.
Key Takeaways
In 2026, CIOs are prioritizing modernization and innovation without disruption. By extending the life of your existing SAP ERP, layering AI-driven orchestration and avoiding vendor lock-in, you can achieve transformation faster, at lower cost and with greater flexibility.
Discover how Agentic AI ERP and the Rimini Smart Path™ methodology can help you modernize boldly, within existing budgets, without surrendering ownership, flexibility or competitive advantage.
[1] Peter M. Färbinger, “Hybrid SAP S/4 Chaos Theory,” E-3 Magazine, retrieved 10 February 2026 from https://e3mag.com/en/hybrid-sap-s-4-chaos-theory/
[2] Grant Gross, “Nearly half of SAP ECC customers may stick with legacy ERP beyond 2027,” CIO, retrieved 20 February 2026 from https://www.cio.com/article/4000543/nearly-half-of-sap-ecc-customers-may-stick-with-legacy-erp-beyond-2027.html
[3] Gerardo Banegas, “SAP Faces Customer Pushback on S/4HANA Migration, Launches New Program,” LinkedIn, May 1, 2025, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/sap-faces-customer-pushback-s4hana-migration-launches-gerardo-banegas-3wnme
