SAP customers warned AI agents could put costs on autopilot

Summary

SaaS SAP customers warned AI agents could put costs on autopilot Billing will be based on 'actions,' whatever those are, leaving enterprises to wonder how fast the meter might run Gartner has warned that SAP users adopting its AI agents could face spiraling costs as the vendor moves to a new commercial model. Last week, the German ERP giant announced plans for its Autonomous Enterprise, including an AI platform for building and governing a suite of agents that do business work. With the new platform comes a new commercial model in which SAP no longer charges according to how many users are authorized to access the platform, but by the value agents offer by completing "actions." SAP has confirmed to The Register that AI Unit purchases are estimated based on the expected number of "agent actions for an autonomous domain." The company promised to introduce "Autonomous Domain Blueprints" that would help estimate costs in so-called "T‑shirt size guidance" indicative of the customer's scale of deployment. However, a recent paper from Gartner warns: "Depending on how SAP defines an 'action,' the number of events incurring fees risks quickly spiraling upwards. This would lead to unexpectedly increased costs, especially if SAP continues to charge higher unit prices for AI Units used in excess of the customer’s contractual commitment, or if AI agents consume a digital access license. Moreover, the value a customer derives from an executed action might not match how SAP has priced that action."Victoria Rowan, Gartner senior principal analyst, is lead author of the report, "First Take: SAP Moves to Higher-Value-Based AI Pricing, but Potential Cautions Remain." The research outfit has promised to update its analysis as SAP publishes more details about its pricing model. It is also waiting for a response to a fact review from the company. SAP provides ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems that help run some of the world's largest companies, including Walmart and VW Group. Ov...