The short answer
SAP and Oracle both charge roughly 22% of net licence price per year for maintenance and support, with annual uplifts, forever. Independent third-party support — Rimini Street is the brand name; Spinnaker Support and Support Revolution compete — benchmarks at about 50% of the vendor support fee from the first invoice (Redress transition benchmarks across 25–40 moves, 2024–25). On a $5.75M SAP licence stack, vendor maintenance is $1,265,000 a year; half of that line is the prize.
What drives the SAP and Oracle support bill
Vendor support is not priced by how much help you use. It is priced as a percentage of what you once paid for licences — about 22% a year, every year, with uplifts on top. A stable estate that has not changed in five years pays the same escalating fee as one in constant flux. That is the whole opportunity for an Oracle support cost reduction: the fee is anchored to a historical licence purchase, not to anything you consume today.
The forcing event: SAP ECC maintenance ends December 31, 2027
SAP adds a deadline. ECC 6.0 mainstream maintenance ends December 31, 2027; extended maintenance to 2030 costs a +2-point premium, and roughly 17,000 organisations are expected to still be on ECC at the deadline (Gartner, via CIO). Every one of them has to decide something — an S/4HANA programme, extended maintenance at a premium, or a support switch that buys time without touching the system. For Oracle estates there is no single cliff date, but the same arithmetic applies at every renewal.
The lower-cost fix: change the support desk, not the system
Cancel vendor maintenance and contract support with an independent provider:
- Rimini Street — the largest third-party provider for SAP and Oracle estates.
- Spinnaker Support — a competing independent provider.
- Support Revolution — another competitor; provider choice should be made on contract terms, not brand.
Your applications, customisations, and data stay exactly where they are. What changes is the support desk, the patching model (virtual patching and compensating controls instead of vendor patches), and the invoice. This is where third-party SAP support savings actually come from — not from a cheaper system, but from refusing to keep paying 22% for one you already own.
Savings comparison
| Scenario | Annual maths | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| $5.75M SAP licence stack on vendor support | 22% × $5.75M = $1,265,000/yr | Vendor maintenance, with annual uplifts |
| Same estate on third-party support | About 50% of the vendor fee from the first invoice | Support provider only — no system change |
| Over a multi-year term | Vendor fees uplift ~3–4%/yr where capped; third-party fees are usually fixed for the term | The gap compounds |
Rimini’s published client stories each report exactly 50% — those are vendor-published case stories, and Rimini’s corporate claim of “up to 90% of total support costs over a decade” is a marketing claim we treat as unproven. The 50% anchor also rests on Redress’s independent transition benchmarks; your quote still has to be negotiated and verified against your last vendor invoice.
How the switch works: audit, archive, contract, verification
- Audit. Price your current support line from the last real invoice, and inventory versions, customisations (including SAP Z-code), and per-country tax and regulatory update needs.
- Archive — before anyone is notified. Download and secure every patch, note, and licence document you are entitled to before terminating vendor support. Once support ends, portal access ends with it.
- Contract. Negotiate scope, indemnity, exit, and audit-cooperation terms across providers — and get the position on returning to vendor support later in writing before you leave. In Redress’s experience, the contract decided the outcome far more often than the brand.
- Verification. Onboard to the provider’s engineers and virtual-patching model, then prove the new support line against your last vendor invoice.
The whole switch is a contracting project, not a systems project: weeks to a few months, with no migration weekend and no user retraining.
The honest risks
You lose vendor patches (Oracle CPUs, SAP Notes), portal access, and upgrade rights, and the estate is effectively frozen on its current release. Security becomes compensating controls and virtual patching, which your security team must explicitly accept — Oracle disputes that this is equivalent, and that disagreement is itself a risk to surface, not hide. Returning to vendor support later can be commercially painful, which is why the re-entry position belongs in writing up front. One reassurance from the record: Oracle’s long litigation was against Rimini, not its customers — no customer has been a defendant (Redress).
Scale matters: below roughly $200–250k/yr of support bill (about a $1M+ licence base), the legal and security review can eat the saving. Above it, this is the cleanest saving on our list — the same discipline we apply to Oracle’s per-employee Java pricing: price the exposure first, then move.
FAQ
How much does third-party support save versus Oracle or SAP support?
The independent benchmark is about 50% of the vendor support fee from the first invoice (Redress Compliance transition benchmarks across 25–40 moves, 2024–25). Vendor support runs about 22% of net licence price per year, so on a $5.75M licence stack the vendor charges $1,265,000/yr and the third-party line is roughly half of that. Rimini Street’s published client stories each report exactly 50%, but those are vendor-published stories, and Rimini’s corporate claim of up to 90% of total support costs over a decade is a marketing claim we treat as unproven. Your quote still has to be negotiated and verified against your last vendor invoice.
Do we have to change or upgrade our SAP or Oracle system?
No. That is the point of the switch: you keep running the same SAP or Oracle estate — same version, same data, same customisations, same users — and change only who supports it. The trade-off is that the estate is effectively frozen on its current release, because you also give up vendor upgrade rights.
What do we lose when we leave vendor support?
Vendor patches (Oracle CPUs, SAP Notes), support-portal access, and upgrade rights. Security coverage becomes compensating controls and virtual patching instead of vendor patches, and your security team has to explicitly accept that model — Oracle disputes that it is equivalent, and that disagreement is itself a risk to surface before you sign, not after.
What happens when SAP ECC mainstream maintenance ends in 2027?
SAP ECC 6.0 mainstream maintenance ends December 31, 2027. Extended maintenance runs to 2030 at a +2-point premium, and roughly 17,000 organisations are expected to still be on ECC at the deadline (Gartner, via CIO). Every one of them has to choose: an S/4HANA programme, extended maintenance at a premium, or a third-party support switch that buys time without touching the system.
Can we go back to vendor support later?
Usually, but returning can be commercially painful — which is why the re-entry position belongs in writing before you leave, not negotiated from weakness afterwards. In Redress’s experience across dozens of moves, the contract decided the outcome far more often than the provider’s brand.
How big does our support bill need to be for this to pay?
Below roughly $200–250k/yr of support bill — about a $1M+ licence base — the legal and security review can eat the saving. Above that scale, this is the cleanest saving on our list: no migration, no retraining, and a saving anchored to your last real vendor invoice.
Want your support bill priced against the exit?
Buy Me Compute’s Support Switch starts with a support-bill audit and an archive-first exit plan — your full patch and licence archive secured before SAP or Oracle hears a word — then provider selection on contract terms, and a verification pack proving the new line against your last vendor invoice.
Email [email protected]Post your own savings example
Switched support, dodged a renewal shock, or found a lifecycle leak that paid? Email the service, old bill, fix, and new bill to [email protected]. We are collecting patterns that may become future posts. Please do not send credentials or private invoices.
Related migrations
- Oracle Java license cost per employee — and the free OpenJDK exit
- VMware renewal shock: the Proxmox exit, priced core by core
- The storage lifecycle leak: how old versions become the bill (S3, B2, R2)
- Atlassian Data Center to Cloud migration cost — and the 2029 deadline
- All software cost and migration guides
Sources and basis
SAP/Oracle ~22% maintenance rate, the $5.75M / $1,265,000 worked example, the ~50% third-party benchmark, minimum scale, and contract findings from Redress Compliance transition benchmarks (2024–25) as summarised in Buy Me Compute’s 2026 giant-vendor migration research; SAP ECC maintenance dates and the ~17,000-organisation figure from Gartner via CIO; Rimini client stories labelled above as vendor-published, and Rimini’s “up to 90%” line labelled as a marketing claim. Prices and terms change — verify against your current vendor contract before acting.