SAP / SAP Senior Level (10+ yrs) Interview questions
How does side-by-side extensibility affect total cost of ownership over time?
Side-by-side extensions shift cost from "risk of core modification" toward ongoing operational and infrastructure cost of maintaining separate applications — a different cost profile, not necessarily a lower one, and the total cost of ownership (TCO) comparison depends heavily on how many extensions accumulate and how well they're governed.
| Core Modification TCO | Side-by-Side TCO |
| Concentrated, spiking cost at each upgrade cycle. | More distributed, ongoing cost: infrastructure, licensing, per-extension maintenance. |
| Risk of large, unpredictable remediation cost later. | More predictable, but can grow linearly (or worse) with extension count if ungoverned. |
A well-governed side-by-side portfolio, with genuine reuse and consolidation discipline, generally achieves better long-term TCO than accumulating core modifications — but an ungoverned, sprawling extension landscape can erode much of that advantage, which is exactly why extension governance (discussed elsewhere) is inseparable from the TCO argument for Clean Core and side-by-side extensibility in the first place.
More Related questions...
