One in Four SAP Users Is Cutting Their IT Budget

4 min read

In the survey by the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG), 24 percent are cutting their overall IT budget. In 2024, that share stood at 18 percent. Autumn budget planning for 2027 primarily affects projects that do not yet have a contract.

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In the DSAG sample, nearly one in four is cutting

The largest group is still increasing spend. Its share falls from 43 to 38 percent. Anyone who only knows the headline IT total sees growth where budgets are already being cut.

198 people from member companies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland responded. One person per user company took part, often the CIO or a senior leader. This is a user group running SAP in live operations. Retail, the trades and services are only marginally represented.

The survey ran from 8 December 2025 to 21 January 2026. The figures apply to these members and this window. Extending them to the entire mid-market turns a sample into a picture the source does not support.

Jens Hungershausen, chairman of the German-speaking SAP User Group, speaks of more targeted and economically sound decisions. The split within the budget is getting tighter because the fixed share is already set.

The 24 percent are the headline for autumn budget planning. The 38 percent increasing their spend do not change the fact that nearly one in four is cutting and that the free remainder is shrinking.

Licenses, maintenance and the law are already on the list

Economic efficiency and economic conditions lead the list of challenges cited, at 79 percent. That is the environment in which the budget is negotiated at all.

70 percent cite license and contract structuring. 63 percent cite the end of maintenance for on-premise solutions. Both are already signed or scheduled.

59 percent cite statutory requirements. These three items are already committed before a new project even comes up for discussion. Without these lines in the template, the autumn round cuts into the free remainder.

License contracts renew, maintenance windows have a date, and laws apply regardless of the pilot. The new project has none of these. That is why the cut lands there.

In mechanical engineering, 30 percent remains for new initiatives

In mechanical and plant engineering, 70 percent of IT budgets go into operations. 30 percent remain for innovation. The mix is an industry-wide figure across many companies.

The VDMA IT specialist group surveyed the 70-to-30 split across 169 companies in May 2025. Erwin Schuster is CIO at Mapal and spokesperson for the group.

The split applies to mechanical and plant engineering. Retail, services and the trades need their own calculation. Anyone copying 70 to 30 into another sector is adopting a number without the operations behind it.

Extended Maintenance buys time until 2030

Nearly half of respondents plan the move to SAP S/4HANA by the end of 2030. That places them in Extended Maintenance at a premium. The migration slips behind the next budget round.

37 percent want to migrate by the end of 2027. Hungershausen cites the skilled worker shortage, parallel transformation projects and limited budgets as reasons for the later timeline. The parallel projects tie up the very people who would have to run the migration.

Extended Maintenance buys time. In the budget, it counts as a maintenance line item.

Those waiting until 2030 pay the premium in the years in between. That money is then missing exactly where a new project could sit in 2027.

Bitkom expects 246 billion euros in market revenue

Bitkom expects the German information technology and telecommunications market to reach 246.4 billion euros in 2026. That would be 4.1 percent more than in the previous year. The vendor side is growing while, in the DSAG sample, one in four is lowering its own budget.

Cloud software is set to climb to 42.5 billion euros, a gain of 21.9 percent. Cloud is thus the flexible block on the vendor side; in user budgets it is often already a running contract.

That is vendor revenue. The DSAG asks about the plan inside the users’ own budgets.

A growing vendor market explains why cloud and software can become more expensive. The 24 percent with a declining allocation stem from the users’ own budgets.

The autumn approval only distributes the remainder not yet under contract

Anyone whose template shows only a single IT total without a breakdown negotiates against last year’s figure. Running licenses and the extended maintenance stay because they are already running. The fixed share never comes back onto the table.

This remainder reveals whether a new project starts in 2027 or waits. Autumn budget planning then distributes the uncontracted remainder.

Without separate lines for mandatory spend, operations and the free share, the round simply repeats last year’s figure. The cut then stays invisible until the project without a contract is dropped.

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Image source: AI-generated (September 2026)