[DigitalToday reporter Chi-gyu Hwang (황치규)] Germany's optics company Zeiss Group has revised its plan to switch to SAP cloud ERP software as costs have increased.

Bloomberg News recently reported that Zeiss changed course after costs swelled by more than 200 million euros over several years. It decided to apply a brownfield approach that moves existing software systems to the cloud.

Zeiss had initially taken a so-called greenfield approach of building a new cloud-based system, but it was more complex than expected and it ultimately shifted direction, Bloomberg News reported, citing sources.

Zeiss' move shows how complex and costly cloud transitions can be, Bloomberg News added.

A Zeiss spokesperson said it has continuously reviewed large projects and adjusted them flexibly. The spokesperson said the company recalibrated the ERP migration to speed up the transition and better meet the needs of each business unit. The spokesperson also said it will move the existing ERP environment to S/4HANA and then each business unit will add tailored solutions, creating a structure with unit-specific applications on top of a groupwide common core system.

SAP is Europe's largest software company, and more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies use SAP solutions. Despite many customers not having transitioned to the cloud, SAP will end standard support for on-premises products at the end of 2027. Against that backdrop, SAP has demanded since 2020 that customers using on-premises solutions switch to subscription software.

But migrating to a cloud-based setup is not easy. U.S. medical device company Zimmer Biomet last year filed a lawsuit against Deloitte, holding it responsible for a failed deployment of SAP cloud software.