SAP has been the dominant name in enterprise resource planning for a long time. That dominance is still real, and SAP is still a powerhouse financially. Yet the tone in the market has changed. Customer patience is thinner, migration pressure is louder, and legal scrutiny is starting to hit the parts of the SAP playbook that many customers have complained about for years.
None of this means SAP is “done.” It does mean there are early warning signs worth paying attention to if you are running a legacy SAP environment or evaluating a move to SAP S/4HANA.
The biggest red flag is not technical. It is legal and regulatory.
The first sign of “trouble in paradise” is coming out of the European Union. Regulators are looking into whether SAP has made it unreasonably difficult for customers to use third-party maintenance and support options.
Why that matters:
- Many SAP customers pay significant annual maintenance fees for older environments.
- Third-party providers often offer support at a lower cost and can extend the usable life of those systems.
- SAP’s public support deadlines create urgency, which raises the stakes when customers try to evaluate alternatives.
The core issue is leverage. When a vendor can limit your alternatives, the negotiating balance shifts away from the customer. Even if you are not based in Europe, this kind of scrutiny matters because it can influence how SAP shapes contracts, pricing, and customer options globally.
The Celonis lawsuit is another signal that the ecosystem is tightening
A separate warning sign is the lawsuit involving Celonis, a business process mining provider. Process mining exists to show what is really happening in your workflows, where bottlenecks live, and where process variation is costing you time and money.
The allegation, in plain terms, is that SAP is making it harder for third-party tools like Celonis to access SAP data, while SAP promotes its own alternatives. Regardless of how the case ends, the market signal is clear: customers and partners are pushing back when an ecosystem starts to feel “closed” by design.
If your transformation strategy depends on independent tools for process visibility, optimization, or governance, this type of lockout risk is not theoretical.
A real case study: Kingfisher chose “no” to SAP S/4HANA
The most interesting market signal is not a lawsuit. It is behavior.
Kingfisher, a major global retailer, publicly discussed a decision to not move from SAP’s legacy environment to SAP S/4HANA. Instead of treating that decision as “doing nothing,” they pursued a different modernization path:
- Kept the existing SAP system as a system of record
- Used cloud infrastructure to modernize hosting without rebuilding the core
- Added third-party AI and digital capabilities on top of the existing foundation
- Shifted toward an application programming interface-driven architecture to make the technology stack more modular
This is the part many vendors do not want discussed: meaningful modernization does not always require a full core replacement.
The adoption reality: a large portion of customers still have not started the move
One more signal is hard to ignore: a significant share of SAP customers still have not begun a serious migration to SAP S/4HANA.
If the value proposition were universally obvious, adoption would look different. Some organizations are delaying because of cost. Others are delaying because of customization and the competitive advantages embedded in their current environment. Plenty are delaying because the risk profile of large-scale core replacement is simply too high for their operating reality.
A forced timeline does not create a business case. It creates resistance.
The trust gap is widening, even while the technology gets better
It is possible for two things to be true at once:
- SAP and other large vendors are building impressive technology, especially around AI and analytics.
- Customers feel more distrust and frustration than they did a decade ago.
A big driver is misalignment. Investors reward rapid cloud conversion and aggressive AI roadmaps. Customers want stability, predictable costs, and control over how the business runs. When those incentives collide, customers feel pressured, not supported.
Layer on aggressive licensing enforcement and audits, and it becomes easier to understand why “trust” is now a major variable in enterprise software decisions.
What this means if you are an SAP customer
This is not a call to abandon SAP. It is a call to lead your roadmap instead of inheriting one.
A few practical implications:
- Treat the vendor roadmap as input, not a mandate. Your business case should drive timing, scope, and sequencing.
- Separate “systems of record” from “systems of innovation.” Many organizations can modernize user experience, analytics, and AI without ripping out the core first.
- Keep options real. Third-party support, modular architecture, and selective modernization can preserve leverage and reduce lock-in risk.
- Plan for long-term flexibility. Any major platform will evolve, pricing will change, and what looks “standard” today may become restrictive tomorrow.
Bottom line
SAP is still a dominant force, but the market is sending signals that the old playbook is losing effectiveness. Legal scrutiny, ecosystem disputes, customer resistance to forced migration, and growing distrust are all headwinds worth taking seriously.
If you are considering SAP S/4HANA, the goal is not to move faster because someone told you to. The goal is to move smarter, on your timeline, with a plan that protects operational stability, cost predictability, and the competitive advantages that make your business what it is.
Eric is recognized globally as a leading voice in digital transformation and ERP strategy. Over the past two decades, he has helped hundreds of organizations – including Nucor Steel, Fisher & Paykel Healthcare, Kodak, Coors, Boeing, and Duke Energy – define their technology roadmaps, modernize complex operations, and deliver real business value from large-scale transformation initiatives.
As Founder and CEO of Third Stage Consulting, Eric leads an independent, technology-agnostic advisory firm focused on helping clients navigate the shift from traditional ERP to more flexible, AI-enabled Digital Enterprise Operations (DEO) models. His work spans ERP selection, implementation quality assurance, organizational change, and operating model design across a wide range of industries and geographies.
Eric is also a prolific thought leader, known for his pragmatic takes on AI, cloud, and enterprise software trends, as well as his firm’s benchmark research and frameworks for de-risking transformation. He is dedicated to helping executive teams cut through vendor hype, make confident investment decisions, and successfully reach the “third stage” of their digital evolution.
