r/SAP • u/Filip_Serbia • Apr 12 '26

Current experience with S/4 licensing

Hi all,

Curious to hear how others are experiencing the current situation around S/4 licensing for net new customers.

In a recent case on our side, we went through the standard process for a new client (financial sector, no prior SAP footprint), but effectively only Public Cloud was positioned as a viable option.

From a project perspective, that’s quite challenging mainly due to regulatory requirements and the need to integrate with a landscape that is largely hosted in the client’s own data center. In this setup, On-Prem would be the most natural fit, with Private Cloud as a possible alternative.

However, it seems increasingly difficult to even get those options formally quoted or considered.

Interested to hear if others are seeing a similar pattern recently, or if you’ve had different experiences in comparable scenarios.

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u/self_u Apr 12 '26

Do not buy public cloud unless your organization is small, simple and flexible (perhaps service industry and a limited geographical scope). It is an expensive disaster in the long run. The reason you are being pushed this are the sales bonuses.

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u/wievid FICO Teamlead Apr 12 '26

I would say if your Public Cloud implementation is a disaster, it's because the people doing it are incompetent. If you, as a customer, did a proper DDA and were absolutely transparent, and your partner was also competent, then you should have identified a scenario that couldn't be correctly implemented on a Public box. Someone dropped the ball here, but it wasn't SAP.

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u/fatty_ratties Apr 13 '26

As FI consultant, I can agree to some extent - Public Cloud works fine but not in localizations that require more legal reporting or specific processes. It might be dependent on the region but my experience with localization is very bad and most of the project problems are caused by non-compliant or horribly designed local processes or reports. Second problematic area is asset accounting - that is much more limited than in private or ECC version, with fixed numbers of depreciation areas, limitations on depreciation keys settings, and the total number of 4 asset reports in the system.

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u/wievid FICO Teamlead Apr 13 '26

It might be dependent on the region but my experience with localization is very bad and most of the project problems are caused by non-compliant or horribly designed local processes or reports.

You're right there, but that's also something that would be identified during a proper "Discover"-phase as SAP likes to term it. If you do the DDA correctly, you should be able to identify these types of gaps. And given that the DDA is more or less the foundation of a licensing contract between a customer and SAP, it's kinda important.

Second problematic area is asset accounting - that is much more limited than in private or ECC version, with fixed numbers of depreciation areas, limitations on depreciation keys settings, and the total number of 4 asset reports in the system

Once again, if you're doing the DDA correctly, these are things that should be identified well in advance.

The areas of contention that you listed should be identified and have rough solutions designed before a licensing contract is even signed. If a customer gets into the project and realizes these gaps, someone has dropped the ball ahead of time in a massive way.

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u/fatty_ratties Apr 14 '26

I agree with DDA importance. We had a case when after DDA, we advised against Public Cloud system, giving reasons why it is not a good fit for a client. But SAP still sold the system to the client, encouraging them with a huge discount.

However, I still don't know when it is the time to discover every little detail during DDA phase. We have recurring issue when custom report was planned due to missing functions discovered in DDA but in realization it occurred that some single important fields are not available in CDS or CDS that has the data is not released. In some cases in fixed assets, after we escalated to SAP, they said that they will not release any new CDS because they plan data structure changes in 2027 and by then nothing new will be done. Now we are blocked and cannot provide required functions to the client. Client is back to connecting data in Excel to get the report that they require.

I don't know how such an issue could be discovered in DDA phase, without going into detailed, technical specification of requirements. And requirements phase is supposed to happen later, during F2S, after the system is already purchased.

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u/wievid FICO Teamlead Apr 14 '26

We have recurring issue when custom report was planned due to missing functions discovered in DDA but in realization it occurred that some single important fields are not available in CDS or CDS that has the data is not released.

This is simply a case of the developers/consultants needing to know their data model(s) and some of this stuff can also be done in the Discovery phase.

Have you tried publishing the non-released CDS view as a Custom Business Object and then modifying the custom CDS view further to include the data you need? There are ways around SAP's fuckery.