Third-party maintenance support is the most-used SAP renewal-time BATNA. The Admodum read on the economics, the operational-risk surface, the licence-retention discipline, the audit-side posture and the publisher-side response.
The TPS construct is straightforward. At the SAP enterprise-agreement renewal anniversary, the buyer discontinues SAP maintenance: the buyer notifies the publisher of the non-renewal of the maintenance line (in accordance with the contracted notice period, typically three months), the buyer retains the perpetual on-prem licences (the licences do not return to the publisher under the contracted perpetual-licence terms), the buyer contracts with the third-party provider for the maintenance-and-support replacement, the buyer transitions the operational support stack to the third-party provider's tooling and processes.
The construct preserves the buyer's use of SAP. The buyer continues to operate ECC or S/4HANA on the buyer's infrastructure (on-premises or on the hyperscaler the buyer elected); the SAP product itself does not change. What changes is the source of the maintenance, the support, the regulatory updates and the patch work. The wider SAP BATNA spoke reads the BATNA framework inside which TPS operates.
The economics are the principal driver of the TPS construct. SAP maintenance is contracted at twenty-two percent of the perpetual licence value per annum (the buyer pays SAP twenty-two percent of the original licence acquisition cost each year for the maintenance line). The TPS run-rate is typically forty to fifty-five percent of the SAP maintenance baseline: a typical TPS contract runs at ten to twelve percent of the original licence acquisition cost per annum. On a large enterprise estate with a hundred-million-euro perpetual licence position, the SAP maintenance line is twenty-two million euros per annum; the TPS replacement runs at ten to twelve million per annum; the annual saving is ten to twelve million euros.
The saving has to be netted against the transition-cost and the foregone-update-value. The transition cost typically runs eight to twelve weeks of internal effort and a one-time TPS provider transition fee; the foregone-update-value is the residual value of the SAP Notes, the new releases and the SAP support portal that the buyer no longer has access to. On a five-year horizon the TPS saving net of the transition cost and the foregone-update-value typically runs forty to fifty percent of the SAP maintenance baseline. The wider ECC end of mainstream spoke reads the foregone-update-value question on the ECC track.
The licence-retention discipline is the position-of-record. The perpetual on-prem licences do not return to the publisher when SAP maintenance is discontinued: the buyer retains the perpetual right to use the contracted licence position under the contract's perpetual-licence terms. The buyer-side artefact set is the position-of-record: the contract registry (the original enterprise agreement and the subsequent amendments), the licence inventory (the contracted Professional User, Functional User, Self-Service User and other licence-category positions), the engine-metric inventory (the contracted Order metric, PO line metric, patient-day metric and other engine positions), the entitlement letters (the SAP-issued confirmations of the contracted positions).
The discipline runs ahead of the discontinuation. The buyer reconstructs the artefact set, reconciles the licence inventory against the rehearsed system measurement, confirms the retained licence position with SAP through the contracted reconciliation procedure, and retains the artefact set as the position-of-record for the post-discontinuation period. The wider SAP system measurement spoke reads the measurement rehearsal that runs ahead of the discontinuation.
The operational-risk surface is the principal trade-off. The buyer loses access to SAP-issued updates (the SAP Notes that distribute publisher-issued patches, bug fixes, regulatory updates and security advisories), the buyer loses access to new release upgrades (the buyer is frozen at the release in force at the discontinuation), the buyer loses access to the SAP support portal (the buyer cannot open incidents directly with SAP). The third-party provider absorbs each of these workloads through alternative engineering tracks: the TPS provider produces its own regulatory-update programme (the country-specific tax, statutory-reporting and labour-law updates), its own security-patch programme (typically through virtual-patching at the application-server layer), its own performance-tuning programme and its own incident-support track.
The residual risk surface is two-fold. The first is the new-functionality risk: any functionality the buyer would have adopted through new release upgrades is not available under TPS; the buyer's release floor freezes at the discontinuation. The second is the S/4HANA conversion exit-cost risk: a buyer that subsequently elects to convert to S/4HANA from a frozen ECC release carries a longer-than-baseline conversion sequencing. The wider S/4HANA conversion planning spoke reads the conversion sequencing.
The publisher-side response to a credible TPS BATNA is reliably the renewal-price concession. The concession runs across three published surfaces. The first is the maintenance-price concession at renewal (typically a five-to-fifteen-percent reduction on the maintenance baseline if the renewal is taken back to the maintenance line; or a credit-and-discount-letter applied against a forward RISE conversion or S/4HANA private edition commitment). The second is the renewal-discount concession on the licence inventory (typically a fifteen-to-thirty-percent discount applied to the rebaselined licence-and-engine inventory). The third is the audit-window concession (typically a softened audit-clause perimeter, a longer audit-notice period or a narrower look-back).
The publisher's concession is calibrated to the credibility of the TPS BATNA. A non-credible TPS BATNA (the buyer names the provider but has not engaged with the provider) produces no concession. A credible TPS BATNA (the buyer has engaged the provider, has run the licence-retention discipline, has executed a transition plan and has internal-stakeholder buy-in) produces the published concession surface. The wider SAP renewal cycle spoke reads the renewal-side process.
At the close of the renewal cycle, the buyer is in one of three published positions. The first is the TPS-executed position: the buyer has discontinued SAP maintenance, has transitioned to the third-party provider, is operating against the retained perpetual licence position. The second is the TPS-driven position: the buyer has used the TPS BATNA to obtain the publisher-side renewal-price concession and has renewed SAP maintenance at the concessioned price level. The third is the TPS-deferred position: the buyer has used the TPS BATNA to obtain the publisher-side renewal-price concession, has renewed at the concessioned level, and has retained the TPS BATNA for the subsequent renewal cycle.
The wider engagement sits in the SAP practice; the aggregated reading list sits in the SAP knowledge hub; active renewal moments route to the Renewal Programme; active audit moments route to Audit Defence.
The publisher's mainstream-maintenance timeline against the TPS construct.
The rehearsed measurement that runs ahead of the TPS discontinuation.
A senior Admodum SAP advisor will read your perpetual-licence retention discipline, your TPS-provider candidate engagement, your transition plan and your renewal-leverage position on a private call. Active renewal moments route to the Renewal Programme.