Unconfirmed reports that Siemens may have cancelled or may be in the process of cancelling its software maintenance contract with SAP have been circulating over the past couple of weeks in the press and in blogs.

A report in the German publication Wirtschaftswoche early this month reportedly said that Siemens has been considering third-party software maintenance alternatives from such companies as Rimini Street and IBM.  On September 12, on his blog, A Software Insider’s Point of View, analyst Ray Wang referenced the German magazine story.

Five days later, in a San Francisco date-lined story, MarketWatch, quoting “media sources,” reported that Siemens had submitted a maintenance termination notice to SAP. The same story quoted JMP Securities analyst Patrick Walravens as saying, “Siemens … may in fact have sent a termination notice for its maintenance agreements.” Also on September 17, InformationWeek weighed in, noting that on June 8 Siemens rejected an SAP human capital management application in favor of a software-as-a-service product from SuccessFactors for a 420,000-seat license. InformationWeek speculated that this rejection, plus the software maintenance development, may show that SAP’s business model isn’t keeping pace with the changing needs of such large corporate customers as Siemens and possibly others.

Meanwhile, neither SAP nor Siemens have confirmed or denied the maintenance cancellation reports.

AMR Research analyst Bruce Richardson, quoted in the MarketWatch story, said that Siemens has 400 SAP systems. He and colleague Jim Shepherd, who posted a response to Ray Wang’s blog, said they are skeptical about the software maintenance reports and even went so far as to say that the reports may suggest a negotiation is underway between Siemens and SAP.

So what to make out of all these so-called “reports”? Is this a case of where there is smoke, there is fire? Or could it be that Siemens simply wants to consider maintenance options and is opening the process, with SAP still a possible winner?

But if the reports turn out to be true or even partly true, this could be a big deal for two reasons. One is that Siemens is not only a well-known, worldwide brand name, but also a big user of SAP applications. Other large organizations might take notice of the speculative reports and get ideas of their own.

The second is what such a cancellation might say, broadly speaking, about pent-up frustration over software maintenance fees attached to traditional on-premise applications used by corporations and other organizations. Keep in mind, too, that frustration over these costs isn’t limited to SAP’s customer base. A report in this week’s issue of BusinessWeek, for example, noted that some Oracle customers are angry about maintenance fees and software audits that result in large bills. Oracle declined to comment on the article, the magazine said.

SAP, though, may well have opened up a Pandora’s box in July of 2008 — when the recession was already starting to dampen business activity — when it announced it was raising fees to 22% of license prices, from 17%. The announced increase didn’t go down well with customers and SAP was forced to backpedal earlier this year and delay the increase for three years. In addition, it agreed to work with the SAP User Group Executive Network, a federation of 12 SAP user groups, to benchmark the enterprise support program. MA has covered this ongoing story from day one.

Meanwhile, SAP’s own efforts to bring a SaaS-based product to market, most notably with its Business ByDesign mid-market software, introduced two years ago this month, are proceeding slowly.

The underlying question, with the Siemens story as sort of a lightning rod, is whether there is a fundamental shift underway in expectations about the value of IT systems such as SAP’s and Oracle’s, their total cost of ownership, and what new delivery models such as SaaS can provide.

I suspect there is. Are the big players like SAP and Oracle really nimble enough to get in front of this changing landscape?