Why Most Enterprises Leave Value on the Table

When an enterprise signs a RISE with SAP contract, the infrastructure layer — the actual compute, storage, and networking — runs on one of three hyperscalers: AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform. SAP selects the hyperscaler on your behalf (or at your request), but here is the critical commercial reality most buyers miss: the hyperscaler has its own incentive to win your workload, and that incentive translates directly into credits, discounts, and commercial concessions.

The mistake enterprises make is treating the SAP negotiation and the hyperscaler negotiation as unrelated. SAP's account team negotiates RISE pricing with you. Separately, your cloud team or procurement organisation renews its enterprise discount programme (EDP or equivalent) with AWS, its Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment (MACC), or its Google Committed Use arrangement. These happen in different rooms, different quarters, sometimes different years.

The dual-vendor strategy changes this by deliberately sequencing and linking both negotiations, using each vendor's desire to win the workload as leverage over the other. Done correctly, the combined effect is larger than either negotiation could deliver independently.

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Key Insight

When an enterprise commits $50–200M of SAP workload to a hyperscaler via RISE, that is one of the largest cloud workload commitments that hyperscaler will book. They will discount aggressively to secure it — but only if you ask, and only if the timing is right.

The Mechanics of Hyperscaler SAP Incentive Programmes

All three major hyperscalers operate formal SAP migration and co-sell incentive programmes, though the specifics differ by vendor and are renegotiated periodically.

AWS SAP Partner Programme

AWS has historically been the largest host for SAP workloads globally and operates a co-sell motion with SAP where certain RISE migrations qualify for AWS activation credits, migration funding, and architectural support. AWS enterprise customers who commit to RISE on AWS infrastructure can negotiate AWS credits applied directly to their EDP commitment, reducing the effective RISE infrastructure cost or freeing credits for adjacent BTP or data workloads.

Microsoft Azure and the MACC Alignment

Microsoft occupies a uniquely powerful position because it is both a hyperscaler (via Azure) and a direct competitor to SAP (via Dynamics 365). Enterprises running both Microsoft 365 and Azure can use RISE on Azure as leverage to demand larger Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitments, extended payment terms, or co-investment in integration support. The key mechanism is the MACC (Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment), which can be structured to absorb a meaningful portion of RISE infrastructure costs at favourable rates.

Google Cloud SAP Incentive Framework

Google has been the most aggressive hyperscaler in competing for SAP RISE workloads in recent years, partly because it has fewer incumbent SAP customers and more to gain. GCP offers Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) and can be persuaded to provide substantial migration credits and sustained use incentives when an enterprise commits a significant SAP landscape. Google's data and analytics capabilities (BigQuery, Looker) also create cross-sell opportunities that enterprise buyers can use as negotiating chips.

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The Dual-Vendor Negotiation Framework: 5 Steps

  1. Establish your hyperscaler preference — then keep it flexible

    Before approaching SAP, decide which hyperscaler you prefer and why — but do not commit internally or communicate that preference externally. Your flexibility is leverage. SAP's preferred infrastructure deployment may differ from yours, and that tension is commercially useful. Tell SAP you are evaluating all three hyperscalers based on total commercial package, not just technical fit.

  2. Engage all three hyperscalers simultaneously

    Send formal RFP-style engagement requests to AWS, Azure, and GCP at the same time, explicitly referencing the size of the SAP workload (in FUE equivalents, user count, or estimated compute consumption) and your timeline. This creates genuine competition and forces each hyperscaler to put forward its best incentive structure up front rather than trickling in concessions over weeks.

  3. Use hyperscaler bids to set the floor for SAP commercial terms

    Once you have preliminary offers from hyperscalers, use the credit and cost information to recalibrate your RISE pricing conversation with SAP. If GCP is offering $4M in migration credits for your workload, that is a concrete data point that SAP's account team must respond to. It also signals to SAP that you are genuinely evaluating alternatives, not just using one vendor as a phantom threat.

  4. Negotiate BTP credit alignment explicitly

    RISE with SAP includes a BTP credit allocation that runs on hyperscaler infrastructure. Ensure that when you negotiate your hyperscaler commitment, the BTP workload is explicitly scoped within the commitment framework — so that BTP consumption counts toward your cloud spend tier rather than sitting outside it. This alone can save six or seven figures in cloud spend over a three-year term. See our guide on SAP BTP credits and consumption management for the technical framework.

  5. Lock in exit rights and infrastructure portability

    The final step — and one most enterprises skip — is ensuring that your RISE exit rights and infrastructure portability provisions are contractually aligned with what the hyperscaler will support. If you need to exit RISE or switch infrastructure providers, the last thing you want is a commercial commitment with AWS that has three years to run while SAP RISE has been terminated. Align termination provisions, notice periods, and credit expiry windows across both contracts simultaneously.

What to Demand from Each Hyperscaler

The following table summarises the core commercial concessions that enterprises should target when negotiating hyperscaler incentives alongside a RISE deal. These are not hypothetical — they reflect what well-advised buyers have extracted in practice.

Hyperscaler Primary Lever Typical Credit Range Key Condition
AWS EDP credit uplift on SAP workload $500K–$3M+ Multi-year RISE commitment aligned to EDP term
Microsoft Azure MACC expansion tied to SAP migration $1M–$5M+ Existing Microsoft M365/Azure relationship; RISE on Azure
Google Cloud Migration credits + CUDs + analytics co-investment $2M–$8M+ Net-new or switching workload; willingness to run Looker/BigQuery

These figures assume a mid-to-large enterprise SAP landscape. Smaller organisations should expect proportionally lower credits, but the negotiation principle is identical.

Common Mistake

Many procurement teams negotiate the hyperscaler commitment after RISE is signed — at which point SAP already knows which infrastructure you are using, and the hyperscaler knows you have no credible alternative. Both negotiations weaken dramatically once the RISE contract is executed. The leverage window is open before signature, not after.

The SAP-Side Negotiation Angles This Unlocks

The dual-vendor strategy does not just affect the hyperscaler deal — it also strengthens your SAP commercial position in specific ways:

  • Infrastructure cost transparency: Because RISE bundles infrastructure into an opaque subscription fee, most buyers cannot see how much they are paying for compute versus SAP licences. Running a parallel hyperscaler negotiation forces SAP to disclose (or allows you to infer) the infrastructure component — enabling better benchmarking. See our article on what's actually included in RISE infrastructure.
  • BTP credit sizing: If your hyperscaler is offering generous BTP-equivalent credits, you can use this to challenge the BTP allocation within RISE itself, either demanding more credits or a lower base subscription fee for the integrated platform.
  • RISE tier selection: The existence of hyperscaler-funded migration support gives you grounds to negotiate which RISE tier (Base, Premium, or Cloud ERP Private) is appropriate, rather than defaulting to SAP's recommended upsell.
  • Payment terms: Hyperscaler credit structures can be used to offset RISE Year 1 invoices if commercial terms are correctly aligned, improving cash flow in the first year of a major cloud transition.

Timing: When the Leverage Window Opens and Closes

The dual-vendor negotiation window is tied to your RISE decision timeline, not your ERP or cloud budget cycle. Specifically:

  • 12–18 months before go-live: Ideal window to engage all three hyperscalers and begin the parallel SAP negotiation. All parties have something to win and enough time to structure complex commercial terms.
  • 6–12 months before go-live: Still viable, but hyperscalers become less willing to offer migration credits if the migration is already under way with a competitor.
  • Under 6 months: Leverage is substantially reduced. SAP knows the deal is close, and the hyperscaler selected by SAP has no competitive pressure. You are now negotiating terms rather than structure.

This timeline also intersects with SAP's fiscal year-end negotiation dynamics. If your RISE decision coincides with SAP's Q4 (October–December), you gain additional leverage over both SAP and the hyperscalers simultaneously — a confluence that can deliver outsized savings.

Hyperscaler Choice and Its Impact on Long-Term SAP Flexibility

Beyond immediate credits, your hyperscaler choice has implications for long-term SAP commercial flexibility that few enterprises model at contract time:

  • Multi-cloud lock-in risk: If your RISE contract specifies a single hyperscaler and that relationship deteriorates (pricing, SLA, or strategic direction), switching requires renegotiating both the RISE contract and the hyperscaler commitment simultaneously — a very high switching cost.
  • BTP portability: SAP BTP services are technically hyperscaler-agnostic, but in practice, latency and data residency considerations tightly couple BTP workloads to the RISE infrastructure hyperscaler. Ensure BTP portability is addressed contractually. Review our guide on SAP BTP across hyperscalers.
  • AI and data infrastructure: SAP's AI features — Joule agents, embedded analytics — increasingly depend on hyperscaler-native AI services. If you are on Azure, Microsoft Copilot integration is tighter. If you are on GCP, BigQuery ML has natural synergies. Aligning your hyperscaler choice with your broader AI and data strategy reduces duplication and future commercial negotiation complexity.

Structuring the Dual-Vendor RFP

When approaching hyperscalers in parallel, your RFP should contain the following elements to generate maximum competitive tension:

  • SAP landscape sizing: current SAPS, planned SAPS, memory requirements, number of SAP systems
  • RISE migration timeline and go-live target date
  • BTP service catalogue (which BTP services are in scope)
  • Non-SAP cloud workload scope (what else you run on cloud that would be co-located)
  • Existing cloud commitments and their expiry dates
  • Evaluation criteria: credit value, term flexibility, SLA commitments, exit rights
  • Decision timeline (and the implicit signal that the timeline is firm)

Do not include your preferred hyperscaler in the RFP. Do not indicate SAP's recommended infrastructure choice. Leave all three vendors believing they have a genuine path to winning.

When to Bring in an Independent Advisor

The dual-vendor negotiation is complex because it requires simultaneous fluency in SAP commercial terms, cloud infrastructure pricing, and the interplay between the two. Internal teams — even very capable ones — typically lack visibility into market benchmarks for both dimensions simultaneously.

An independent RISE with SAP advisory practice brings three things that are difficult to replicate internally: current market intelligence on what other enterprises have extracted from the same hyperscalers, a negotiation process that creates genuine multi-party tension, and contractual review expertise to ensure that the credits, portability provisions, and exit rights you negotiate are actually enforceable in the final documents.

The cost of an independent advisor for a major RISE negotiation is typically recovered within the first year from improved commercial terms — often within the first round of negotiation. Contact us to discuss your specific situation.

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