SAP users say the debate over the vendor's recent decision to force all customers onto enterprise support is far from over and they want SAP to back up its claims about the service's added benefits with hard data.

Meanwhile, there is no indication the vendor will change course.

"We continue to be very pleased with the reaction from customers we see in the market," said SAP spokesman Bill Wohl. "While customers are saying they never like to pay more money, they see the additional value."

On July 16, SAP announced that the enterprise support offering will replace the standard and premium support options. Current customers that are transitioned to it will start receiving some enterprise support features now, but won't see any price increases until Jan. 1, SAP said. The increases will be phased in gradually until 2012, eventually reaching the enterprise support level of 22 percent of maintenance base, compared to 17 percent for standard support.

Wohl repeated SAP's past contention that its move was tied to the fact that customer environments have become increasingly complex -- and not to a desire to drive revenue -- and that the service's additional benefits could actually lead to efficiencies and cost savings.

SAP customers and user group leaders aren't yet convinced this is the case.

"Supposedly, we're going to get more value. I haven't seen it because I haven't been shown it," said Michael Davidson, CIO of Apotex, a large Canadian pharmaceutical company.

Apotex won't immediately feel the effect of higher costs because it has some time remaining on an existing deal, he said, but added, "we need to look at a longer term of what that level of maintenance is, and ask quite honestly, 'Are we getting business value?'"

Meanwhile, the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) said in a statement on Aug. 7 that it "cannot support the compulsory replacement of Standard Support with Enterprise Support at this point in time."

"Our impression is and the feedback we got from our members is that the opposition is very significant," group board member Andreas Oczko said in an interview Wednesday. "The feedback, especially from the small-to-medium businesses, is that they have very simple landscapes and are familiar with their systems. They don't see at the moment why they should need enterprise support."

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.