Yikes, tough crowd: Only 30% of German-speaking users are happy with SAP's cloud push

Licensing, integration and security remain challenges, says DSAG survey

Updated Less than a third of German-speaking SAP users think the global application vendor is doing a good job of getting its software to work in the cloud.

The survey from user group DSAG, which represents those in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, showed that only 30 per cent of members have had good experiences with SAP in the cloud. The figure for use of non-SAP software was around 60 per cent.

"That one-third approval is a surprising finding. It shows that SAP needs to work harder to solve critical issues like licensing, integration and security, and to build trust – for example, with sustainable concepts and lots of persuasions," said DSAG chairman Jens Hungershausen.

The result from the survey of 173 DSAG members in June and July 2021 is likely to worry SAP, which has staked a great deal in getting its business software seen in the same terms as so-called cloud-native SaaS from companies such as Workday and Salesforce. In autumn last year, SAP's stock fell 23 per cent as it reset market expectations of its growth in order to allow time to move customers onto higher-margin cloud subscriptions.

The DSAG survey also revealed something of a bugbear among SAP users in terms of integrating the vendor's various applications, both on-prem and in the cloud.

Although SAP has vision building efficient, end-to-end processes in cloud and hybrid environments, users remain unimpressed. Only 28 per cent rated the status of the integration between SAP applications, partner and third-party solutions as good, while 44 per cent said it was satisfactory and 14 per cent said it was inadequate.

"In terms of integration, there's still plenty left to do. SAP has already made considerable headway in this area. But the results should be seen by SAP as another major wake-up call," said Hungershausen said in a canned statement.

SAP has been offered the opportunity to respond to the DSAG survey.

Overall, the survey did have good news about IT budgets. Last year, only 2 per cent of companies expected their budgets to increase by more than 20 per cent. In 2021, that figure increased to 6 per cent. Meanwhile, 22 per cent expected budget cuts of more than 20 per cent last year, but only 6 per cent expected the same level of cuts this year. ®

Updated on 21 September 2021 to add:

An SAP spokesperson has been in touch to say: "Strong demand for our RISE with SAP cloud transformation offering continues, propelling the strong growth rates we’ve seen in recent quarters.

"Holistic business transformation requires more than a purely technical cloud migration. SAP is uniquely positioned to ensure our customers' success in the cloud by enabling the creation of new business models that respond to fast-moving market dynamics, as evidenced by our record-high customer satisfaction scores."