SAP Sapphire 2026 recently took place in Orlando, where the company presented its latest strategy and positioning. At the event, SAP doubled down on the shift toward AI-led platforms, reinforced fixed ECC end-of-support deadlines and tightened the commercial linkage between cloud adoption and access to innovation — particularly AI.
Many SAP customers now feel even greater pressure to make near-term decisions with long-term financial, operational and architectural consequences — often before cost is clarified and organizational readiness is assessed.
Before allowing outcomes from Sapphire 2026 to influence decision-making, executives should pause, align internally and evaluate key assumptions in the 30–90 days following the event.
Leverage the checklist below as your guide to consider critical factors such as negotiating leverage and cost exposure. Making deliberate choices based on business readiness and financial reality, rather than vendor timelines, will serve your best interests.
Align on what Sapphire 2026 really changed
At Sapphire 2026, SAP repositioned itself as a “business AI platform company.” It also unveiled its new vision of the “Autonomous Enterprise,” centered on hundreds of embedded AI agents across core business functions and orchestrated through Joule as a unified interface.
For ECC and S/4HANA on-prem customers, however, access to this AI future is commercially gated. SAP has tied Joule and AI agent enablement to a costly requirement: Customers must sign up for a RISE journey and redirect more than 50% of their maintenance spend to SAP cloud services. This offer — referred to as the Max Success Plan and promoted as a way for on-prem and cloud customers to adopt AI “at their own pace”[1] — isn’t a technical dependency but a contractual and financial one.
Executive takeaway: SAP’s new vision is as much a business model shift as a technology shift.
Establish the full cost involved before engaging SAP
SAP’s proposed 50% cloud commitment for ECC and S/4HANA on-prem customers represents a substantial multiyear financial obligation rather than a marginal AI add-on. Any serious evaluation of this cloud migration should account for the total cost of change, including:
- Migration and conversion costs
- Cloud subscriptions and usage-based pricing
- Integration rework and data remediation
- Retraining, change management and operational disruption
At the same time, leadership should quantify the opportunity cost of continuing to run on-prem without adopting SAP’s new offer. Independent support models, such as Rimini Support™, can reduce annual maintenance fees by up to 50%, creating a funding source — within the existing budget — for AI, analytics and process automation, without being locked into SAP’s bundled AI stack.
Executive takeaway: Don’t negotiate AI access via SAP without first understanding total cost exposure and credible alternatives.
Pressure-test AI ROI and organizational readiness
Most enterprises still lack a formal framework for measuring AI value — a gap reflected in the fact that 56% of organizations report an ROI of less than 5% for AI initiatives to date.[2] As such, committing to a substantial amount of AI credits or bundled agent packages without defined success metrics increases the risk of sunk costs and weak ROI.
AI investments should be gated by:
- Clearly identified high-priority use cases
- Measurable business outcomes
- Defined ownership and accountability
Equally important, AI success isn’t just a technology challenge. SAP itself emphasized that AI agents don’t deliver value without process alteration, user adoption and sustained change management. If teams are already strained by S/4HANA migration or cost-reduction mandates, adding AI transformation to the workload can overwhelm capacity. Leadership must determine whether internal skills, operating models and governance structures can realistically support an “autonomous” environment.
Executive takeaway: AI value depends more on readiness and discipline than on access to agents.
Confirm CAPEX vs. OPEX implications
Many SAP customers are still depreciating on-premises assets. In fact, as of late 2024, just 39% of SAP ECC customers had completed a move to S/4HANA.[3]
Moving to subscription-based cloud and AI services shifts spending from CAPEX to OPEX, requiring the full expense to be absorbed in the year. For some organizations, particularly capital-intensive or regulated industries, this can introduce:
- Budgeting pressure
- Earnings volatility
- Rate-recovery challenges
Executive takeaway: Expense implications must be explicitly addressed before an organization commits to cloud-led AI models.
Leverage options to innovate and modernize without disruption
SAP’s cloud-first AI roadmap isn’t the only option available to ECC and S/4HANA on-prem customers. Leadership should explore alternatives that allow them to continue running their stable, trusted ERP systems while still advancing modernization and innovation goals. An Agentic AI ERP approach enables faster time-to-value by layering Agentic AI over the top of existing ECC and S/4HANA systems, delivering intelligence and process optimization in weeks or months, not years, without wholesale replatforming. Organizations can then select best-fit applications to modernize around the core ERP, retaining its highly valuable data and avoiding disruption. For those seeking infrastructure flexibility, a lift-and-shift to a leading hyperscaler can further modernize the operating environment without requiring a commitment to SAP RISE.
Executive takeaway: Innovation and modernization don’t have to be tied to disruptive migrations or irreversible commercial commitments.
Use this window to strengthen your negotiating position
Before the next SAP renewal or AI discussion, leadership should obtain a side-by-side comparison of SAP’s Autonomous Enterprise path vs. an independent support model with reinvestment into best-of-breed AI.
This reframes the conversation from “How fast can we comply?” to “Which path delivers measurable value and allows me to take control of my ERP roadmap?”
Engaging early with vendor-neutral license and contract advisory services can help clarify exposure to new pricing models, bundling tactics and long-term obligations — before SAP’s post-Sapphire 2026 pricing structure is finalized.
Executive takeaway: Optionality is negotiating power.
Approach the next 30–90 days strategically
For CIOs, CFOs and IT leaders, the initial months following SAP Sapphire offer an opportunity to step back and deliberately decide what comes next. Use this checklist to align stakeholders, test assumptions and evaluate options before committing to a major decision with long-term implications for the organization. The goal shouldn’t be speed for its own sake but gaining the clarity necessary to choose the right path forward.
SAP Sapphire 2026 clarified the company’s AI ambition, but it also concentrated costs, increased pricing uncertainty and intensified timeline pressure. In this environment, flexibility, cost control and ROI discipline matter more than speed of commitment. For organizations running ECC and S/4HANA on-prem, there are other ways to accelerate AI adoption — without the risk of vendor lock-in or budget impact. Explore third-party support, optimization services and Agentic AI innovation solutions for SAP from Rimini Street.
[1] Lindsay Clark, “SAP U-turn brings AI features to ECC and on-prem S/4HANA,” The Register, retrieved 19 May 2026 from https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/13/sap-u-turn-brings-ai-features-to-ecc-and-on-prem-s/4hana/5239040
[2] Janett Haas, Ross Gagnon, “5 Strategic AI Tensions That Define The Future Of The Enterprise,” Forbes, retrieved 19 May 2026 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes-research/2025/10/06/ai-maturity-tensions-enterprise-leaders-rethink-strategy/?streamIndex=0
[3] Grant Gross, “Nearly Half of SAP ECC customers may stick with legacy ERP beyond 2027,” CIO, retrieved 19 May 2026 from https://www.cio.com/article/4000543/nearly-half-of-sap-ecc-customers-may-stick-with-legacy-erp-beyond-2027.html
