At the recent SAP Sapphire & ASUG Annual Conference, SAP announced that it plans to simplify its service and support offerings, aiming to launch these updates in January 2026.
SAP has heard from customers that navigating the numerous service plans available today can be confusing. “We’ve recognized that those options may not be as clear-cut and may not be as applicable to customers in the environments that they’re running,” said Kristen Scheffler, VP of customer engagement in North America at SAP.
She and Kristen Dennis, ASUG volunteer in IT Operations, shared their biggest takeaways from SAP Sapphire in a recent Community Conversation for the ASUG IT Operations Community. (Access the presentation here.)
Simplified Service Plans
The new SAP Services and Support portfolio will have better choice, clarity, and simplicity in engagement options, more predictability of TCO and ROI, continuous value realization, a consistent approach delivered across the SAP landscape, and will better drive innovation adoption.
There are three main levels of service to choose from, which cumulate as a company advances to the next plan:
The first level of service is Foundational, which keeps up with mission-critical support service-level agreements (SLAs), provides guidance for SAP Cloud ALM, features self-guided learning journeys, contains embedded launch activities and onboarding resources, and more.
The Advanced level features everything Foundational, as well as accelerated SLAs for support response, unlimited product release guidance, intelligent quality and performance monitoring platform, allocation of activation and optimization services, and a success plan advisor.
The Max plan encompasses the other plans, also including scenario-based architecture guidance, allocation of premium services, concierge service for high product incidents, and proof-of-concept development for innovation use cases.
Professional services add-ons will be available for project-based needs, helping optimize and implement SAP applications. Application management add-ons will also be available for cloud operations, especially for test management and advanced monitoring.
Scheffler shared a scenario of a company adopting SAP Business AI solutions and needing to identify custom AI use cases. If they went with a Foundational plan, it would help ramp up their team with learning journeys for SAP Business AI and turn on Joule through SAP and Me.
For the Advanced plan, they would have the same foundational services, as well as identifying the potential of SAP Business AI for the organization, build a plan and activate strategic SAP Business AI use cases, and receive ongoing product guidance and optimization advice.
The Max plan would also provide a defined AI strategy, creation of a data and architecture road map, and build prototypes for custom AI use cases.
There are already resources available that can mimic the upcoming service plans. For example, SAP customers can experience the Advanced success plan with these services:
- Activation services
- Start using software sooner and improve operations with small deployment services.
- SAP Value Assurance
- Safeguard the initial technical solution deployment to ensure adoption long term.
- SAP Preferred Success
- Support long-term adoption of and value realization from the cloud solution.
- SAP Micro-App Hub Units
- Access to a repository of solutions to extend core SAP applications.
When an audience member asked which of today’s service support names align with the upcoming model, Scheffler compared the Enterprise Support plan of today with the Foundational plan of 2026.
SAP is also focused on making sure all its customers is aware of how this evolution works and where they can find the right training. “We really want to make sure that we are prepared and that we are meeting you where you need to be in your journey moving forward,” she said.
