Business Objects BI Pricing: A Chance for Middle Ground?

Being in the production phase of our next "PAC on SAP" report due in April entitled "Opportunities Around Business Objects BI Services," our discussions are beginning to match some of the market rumblings we've heard prior around the pricing of Business Objects.

On one hand, we continue to see great opportunities for this BI suite during the economic downturn for companies to gain better insights into their SAP ERP systems, increasing efficiency, reactivity and reporting.... However, let's be honest. In this market where big net-new deals are quite rare, SAP is/will target its existing clients to invest into Business Objects BI. The question seems to be for existing SAP BI customers, how much investment is fair?

On one hand, there are many existing SAP customers who have invested into the SAP BI products housed in the Netweaver suite who are now being told that most of those products are not going to be part of the future BI road map. Fair enough, since the comparable Business Objects solutions, in most cases, are far more advanced and mature. Beyond this, the Business Objects BI portfolio went far further into front-end BI solutions than what SAP had pre-acquisition, such as the Xcelsius tool for MS Excel migration and transformation. However, many customers seem to be wondering why they should have to make another large/full investment into Business Objects BI, when their original SAP BI purchase from a few years ago was sold to them as "best-of-breed" BI with the backing and development of SAP behind it?

I completely agree with SAP on the fact that Business Objects is a far broader BI portfolio and certainly some premium should be paid by customers who take advantage of solutions that now go above and beyond of what was available before. But a completely new investment by current SAP BI customers seems a bit out of hand, especially during this economic period. Shouldn't some credit be offered for past investment into "SAP BI" and a path for "base BI" (to have more or less comparable BI functionality as before, but on the Business Objects platform) be offered? I am sure there is quite a bit of discounting being offered to move deals forward today, but without a clear path around pricing options for customers to stay at a "base" vs extending into all of the new solutions should be offered. The shame at the end of the day is that these solutions are extremely valuable to customers right now, but some middle ground needs to be achieved in pricing to really unlock this market!