In July, SAP announced plans to move all customers to Enterprise Support. The news prompted significant outcry from user groups in Europe, while ASUG, which claims to have more than 50,000 members, has maintained a more moderate tone.

Maintenance pricing is an important issue, and "nobody likes a price increase," but ASUG's mission also includes tracking where SAP is "headed with the product," said board member Anthony Bosco, who is also CIO of Day & Zimmerman, a services provider with US$2.2 billion in annual revenue.

Still, SAP must deliver on the promises it is making about Enterprise Support, Bosco said.

The SAP User Group Executive Network (SUGEN), consisting of user group representatives from around the world, is working with SAP to develop key performance indicators for Enterprise Support. SAP has said the parties will "jointly evaluate the progress of these KPIs against customer expectations on a regular basis and adjust the continued rollout of SAP Enterprise Support until the quality measures are achieved."

A more recent development seemed to raise a potential hindrance to that plan.