The parade of new names announced at SAP Sapphire 2025 had attendees tilting their heads and furrowing their brows. “Wait, what?” “But I thought ….” “What does ‘RISE’ mean now?”
What’s clear is that SAP has once again moved the goalposts for its customers. At first glance, the recent rebranding of “RISE with SAP” to “SAP Cloud ERP Private” may appear to be a simple name change. However, in a recent article by CIO magazine, SAP’s Rise rebrand conceals cost changes, analysts from Gartner® and other firms warn that this move could conceal significant cost increases and further entrench vendor lock-in.
Rebranding doesn’t equal simplification
For years, SAP has been pushing the RISE with SAP program and packages for its enterprise customers, aiming to drive them to bundled cloud subscription agreements. Even early adopters of S/4HANA, having implemented on premises, were no longer on SAP’s preferred path and would not get access to some of SAP’s new features, including AI, GenAI and more, without moving to a RISE with SAP agreement. If you were an SAP enterprise customer, all you seemed to hear was RISE, RISE, RISE.
But now, RISE with SAP has been relegated to a “methodology” or a “customer journey.”
SAP’s previous RISE packaging — Base, Premium and Premium Plus — was straightforward and transparent. Now, under the “SAP Cloud ERP Private” umbrella, the offerings are bundled in ways that obscure pricing and make it harder to compare value across tiers. This complexity makes it more difficult for CIOs to forecast costs, negotiate contracts or even understand what they’re buying.
Bundled services = higher costs + less flexibility
SAP’s bundles often include hyperscaler infrastructure, managed services and software subscriptions — all under SAP’s control. Although this may sound convenient, it typically comes at a premium price and limits your ability to choose best-fit solutions or negotiate favorable terms.
Analysts have determined that the new packages have nearly twice as many bundled SKUs compared to the RISE with SAP Premium package. Organizations need to consider whether they need all those products and whether SAP is the best provider of that functionality. Additionally, some capabilities that were previously available with SAP’s less expensive license category for a Full User Equivalent (FUE) have been moved to the more expensive Professional FUE.
This aligns with what we’ve been saying at Rimini Street for years: SAP’s roadmap is designed to benefit SAP, not necessarily its customers. The more you bundle, the more you pay — and the harder it becomes to pivot quickly and smoothly when business priorities change.
How much will AI cost?
Then there’s AI pricing. As if the mysterious conversion from credits to consumption wasn’t opaque enough, now AI “units” that were originally included in the Premium Plus package are being sold as add-ons.
There’s no question that we’ll see exponential growth in the use of AI in and around ERP systems and that costs will be charged based on consumption, but predicting those costs will be far more difficult compared to the simpler per-user-per-month traditional models.
Here’s a fun challenge: Go to your CFO and say, “Our ERP costs for coming years will be both unpredictable and uncontrollable. Is that OK with you?” Let me know how that goes.
Don’t let a name change derail your strategy
The rebranding of “RISE with SAP” to “SAP Cloud ERP Private” is more than cosmetic — it’s a strategic shift that could have major financial and operational implications for your business. Don’t let SAP’s end-of-support deadlines or its unrelenting drive to eliminate perpetual licenses to increase the vendor’s own recurring revenue shake your business or IT strategy.
Look around. Viable new technologies are exploding on to the enterprise software landscape. This is no time to get locked in. Take control of your roadmap and keep your future options open.
Key
The recent renaming of SAP’s products and programs can be viewed as the vendor’s latest ploy to get customers locked into a costly and restrictive subscription model. Rather than getting swept up in the confusion and complexity, focus on choosing the right path forward for your business — one that enables you to maintain optionality.
Learn how Rimini Street can help you choose real innovation over SAP upgrades here.
