SAP customers warned AI agents could put costs on autopilot

SaaS

Billing will be based on ‘actions,’ whatever those are, leaving enterprises to wonder how fast the meter might run

Gartner has warned that SAP users adopting its AI agents could face spiraling costs as the vendor moves to a new commercial
model.

Last week, the German ERP giant announced plans for its Autonomous
Enterprise, including an AI platform for building and governing a suite
of agents that do business work.

With the new platform comes a new
commercial model in which SAP no longer charges according to how many users are authorized to access the platform, but by the value agents offer by completing “actions.”

SAP has confirmed to The Register that AI
Unit purchases are estimated based on the expected number of “agent actions for
an autonomous domain.”

The company promised to introduce “Autonomous
Domain Blueprints” that would help estimate costs in so-called “T‑shirt size guidance” indicative of the customer’s scale of deployment.

However, a recent paper from Gartner warns: “Depending on how SAP defines an ‘action,’ the number of events incurring fees
risks quickly spiraling upwards. This would lead to unexpectedly increased costs,
especially if SAP continues to charge higher unit prices for AI Units used in
excess of the customer’s contractual commitment, or if AI agents consume a
digital access license. Moreover, the value a customer derives from an executed
action might not match how SAP has priced that action.”

Victoria Rowan, Gartner senior principal
analyst, is lead author of the report, “First Take: SAP Moves to
Higher-Value-Based AI Pricing, but Potential Cautions Remain.” The research outfit has promised to update its analysis as SAP publishes more details about
its pricing model. It is also waiting for a response to a fact review from the company.

SAP provides ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems that help run some
of the world’s largest companies, including Walmart and VW Group. Over the
past five years, it has been trying to get customers to move to the cloud and
off legacy software. More recently, it has made a big push for AI adoption.

In its research, Gartner said users
need to take care in how they cost AI adoption with SAP, which provides AI
Units as a commercial metric.

“The AI Units customers purchase are
converted to the license metric of the particular SAP Premium AI services they
consume. SAP’s contracts give SAP the ability to alter the conversion factors,
meaning SAP could end up charging more during the term and at the point of
contractual renewal,” the paper says.

An SAP spokesperson said conversion rates were intended to reflect the usage of the applicable AI features. “Any changes to conversion rates would only take effect upon renewal for existing customers, as further described in the applicable AI Units order form.”

Gartner also pointed
out that there was a lack of “clear definitions of how the customer-built
agents’ work will be measured.” While this remains the case, “it will be
difficult to predict and control runtime costs.”

The SAP spokesperson said
the runtime metrics for Joule Studio – SAP’s agent builder platform – had not
yet been disclosed.

Announcing SAP’s Business AI platform last
week, CEO Christian Klein promised customers could unlock new sources of
revenue and make “meaningful cost savings.”

Gartner advises users thinking about adopting
SAP’s AI platform to review their existing contracts to check whether they have
price-protection clauses for their SAP Cloud applications, such as S/4HANA.
They should also get a baseline for the conversion of AI Units by obtaining a
copy of the current SAP AI Services List from the SAP Trust Center and
reviewing the current conversion factors. ®