SAP RISE Renewal Cliff: The Time for Planning is Now

The first wave of RISE renewals is approaching, and the SAP landscape these customers are renewing looks very different from the one they originally signed up for.

When RISE with SAP launched in 2021, it promised simplicity: bundled software, infrastructure, and services delivered under a single commercial framework. Early adopters moved quickly, making bold transformation commitments and absorbing significant operational risk to modernize their ERP environments.

Organizations that approach their RISE renewal assuming it will resemble their original RISE negotiation risk misjudging the complexity, commercial dynamics, and strategic implications of today’s environment. In reality, RISE renewals should be approached as negotiations for a new agreement rather than simple extensions of an existing contract. The commercial and strategic landscape surrounding RISE has changed dramatically.

When those early agreements were executed, SAP was operating in aggressive cloud acceleration mode, prioritizing logo acquisition, market validation, and rapid expansion of its cloud backlog. Today, SAP’s strategy has fundamentally shifted, with a recent focus on margin optimization, emphasizing recurring revenue growth, AI monetization, and standardized public cloud adoption.

Since organizations signed their original RISE deals, SAP has:

• Introduced entirely new Cloud ERP Packaging
• Expanded and shifted commercial models with varying flexibility
• Evolved their services model and priorities
• Embedded AI & Business Data Cloud the top of its growth strategy
• Undergone significant executive leadership turnover
• Tightened their pricing philosophy at the expense of their customers

At the same time, customers are facing a potentially favorable, but narrow negotiation window coming off the heels of an earnings report that indicated pressure around cloud backlog expectations.

Why this matters: RISE renewals will not occur under the same rules, financial priorities, or leadership dynamics that governed the original agreements. For many enterprises, this moment represents a strategic reset in their relationship with SAP. The decisions made during renewal will shape the organization’s ERP operating model, innovation roadmap, and commercial leverage with SAP for years to come.

How RISE Has Evolved and Why More Risk Now Sits with Customers

RISE is no longer a simple, singular commercial construct. What was initially positioned as a streamlined ERP subscription model has evolved into a complex set of commercial, infrastructure, and operating model decisions for enterprises to evaluate including:

• Four (4) Cloud ERP variants (Private, Limited, Base, Tailored)
• Two (2) Tailored Commercial Models (Private Tailored and Commit-to-Consume) with de-bundled Infrastructure
• Three (3) Success Plans Support tiers (Foundational, Advanced and Max)
• Bundled transformation tools and CAS Services under a singular SKU
• Expanded Full User Equivalent (FUE) tier classifications

Each of these changes introduces important trade-offs around licensing flexibility, infrastructure scalability, and long-term cost structure that must be carefully evaluated before committing to a renewal construct.

Why this matters: Selecting the wrong construct can constrain future growth, lock in unnecessary long-term costs, and create structural misalignment with your enterprise’s cloud and architecture strategy.

How AI and Business Data Cloud Are SAP’s New Revenue Engine

SAP has made AI the central pillar of its growth strategy, positioning new AI capabilities and Business Data Cloud (BDC) as foundational components of its platform going forward.

Organizations approaching a RISE renewal did not face the same AI consumption and pricing decisions that newer RISE customers encounter today.

While the broader technology landscape continues to evolve around AI, SAP has clearly centered its business strategy around it, as evidenced by:

• Actively inserting AI and BDC solutions into renewal proposals
• Structuring AI capabilities as consumption-based and metered offerings
• Positioning BDC as the data foundation for SAP’s next phase of platform growth
• Expanding industry-specific AI agents and embedded automation capabilities

Customers must now define their enterprise AI roadmap, determine how it aligns with SAP’s rapidly evolving AI strategy, and forecast consumption exposure for AI capabilities that remain new, evolving rapidly, and inherently difficult to predict.

Why this matters: AI is quickly becoming a structural component of SAP’s commercial model. Without careful evaluation, organizations risk committing to consumption-based AI offerings that introduce unpredictable costs and long-term complexity within their enterprise data architecture.

How SAP’s Commercial, Services and Support Models Have Changed

Over just the last three years, SAP has introduced, rebranded, and retired multiple RISE offerings, including:

• RISE Packaging – Premium and Premium Plus tiers that ultimately evolved into today’s Cloud ERP Private constructs with bundled functionality.
• Cloud Application Services (CAS) – SAP has consolidated their main Services offering. Previously, CAS capabilities were offered as individual service line items that customers could select based on their specific requirements. Customers who once selected discrete services now pay for standardized service packages, whether those services are needed or not.
• Success Plans – Most recently, SAP announced another change to its support model with the introduction of SAP Success Plans, a simplified service and support framework available exclusively to cloud customers and embedded with AI capabilities. The new model consolidates offerings into three service tiers: Foundational, Advanced and Max. These replace the legacy Max and Active Attention offerings. One notable change is the ability for customers to mix and match support tiers across different solutions.

Why this matters: Enterprises must now determine whether these bundled services align with their internal capabilities and implementation strategy. These changes are closely tied to SAP’s cloud growth strategy, introducing embedded AI capabilities and percentage-based service fees that reinforce subscription commitments and can increase long-term costs.

How Customers’ Requirements Have Changed, Often More than Realized

The evolution is not limited to SAP. Customer environments and requirements have changed significantly as well. Since executing early RISE Agreements, many enterprises have:

• Discovered utilization gaps and accumulated shelfware
• Encountered infrastructure sizing misalignment
• Executed significant Change Orders, particularly where flexibility terms were not negotiated
• Developed more defined Cloud, Innovation and AI roadmaps

At the same time, the broader market is experiencing increased merger and acquisition activity. These events introduce additional complexity, making it more difficult for organizations to clearly define long-term technology requirements and roadmaps.

Why this matters: Your renewal presents a critical opportunity to correct prior structural misalignment and establish a more flexible commercial model with SAP that better reflects your organization’s current requirements and future roadmap.

Key SAP Market Dynamics Executives Should Be Aware Of

In addition to product and commercial model changes, executives should also be aware of several broader market dynamics shaping RISE renewal discussions.

1. SAP’s pricing philosophy has tightened – Early RISE adoption was fueled by aggressive discounts. Today, SAP is focused on recurring revenue stability and margin protection, making those discount levels increasingly difficult to achieve.
2. Public Cloud Push – SAP has emphasized accelerating public cloud adoption. Public cloud now represents roughly 50% of cloud order entry and is growing significantly faster than private cloud. Customers should expect pressure toward standardized public cloud models, even when private cloud better aligns to customers’ requirements.
3. Leadership Overhaul – The executive sponsor who negotiated your original RISE agreement may no longer be in place or may have shifted roles within SAP. Expect a larger presence from SAP’s Waldorf leadership team and with that, new priorities and risk tolerance during the renewal negotiation cycle.
4. Renewal Decisions are Interdependent – RISE renewal decisions should not be evaluated in isolation. They intersect with multiple stakeholders including SAP, hyperscalers, and implementation partners, making the renewal process far more complex than traditional software renewals.

A Strategic Planning Approach for your RISE Renewal

Customers approaching their RISE renewal should not view this as a continuation, but rather a reset point in their relationship with SAP. It’s critical for executives to certify that the following questions have been addressed leading up to renewal discussions for RISE:

1. Does our current RISE construct still align to my enterprises cloud, ERP, and AI strategy for the next 5+ years?
2. What have we learned from our actual RISE utilization, and where do structural inefficiencies exist?
3. Which of SAP’s new offerings, including AI capabilities, Business Data Cloud, and new Cloud ERP packaging, are truly strategic for our organization?
4. Are we evaluating the renewal as an integrated operating model decision or simply as a contract negotiation?
5. Do we have the right executive alignment, both internally and within SAP, to navigate this renewal effectively?

If your organization is struggling to answer these questions, UpperEdge can help through our Integrated SAP RISE Evaluation offering. In today’s evolving RISE landscape, SAP typically does not proactively highlight the full set of decisions, risks, and alternative options available to customers.

UpperEdge brings extensive experience supporting enterprises across a broad network of RISE agreements, including complex renewal negotiations. Entering renewal discussions with a clear understanding of your options, and strong internal alignment, provides a meaningful advantage over organizations that approach renewal unprepared.

Our team specializes in RISE evaluations, commercial risk mitigation, and benchmarking across AI and BDC consumption models, helping organizations develop informed, executive-level negotiation strategies.

The time to prepare for this critical reset point with SAP is now.