New Planning Reliability through SAP Maintenance Extension

Current situation:

SAP guarantees its customers maintenance of the SAP S/4HANA Business Suite through 2040, thereby providing innovations for the flagship product SAP S/4HANA for at least 20 more years. In addition, regular maintenance of Business Suite 7 and therefore of ERP 6.0 has been extended through 2027, and the offer for the extended maintenance through 2030.

Through 2027: Mainstream Maintenance
From 2028: Maintenance model "Customer Specific Maintenance" (no changes in fees)
2028 until the end of 2030: Maintenance option "Extended Maintenance" (additional fees!) if a longer conversion phase to SAP S/4HANA is needed.

Effect:

The time pressure when switching to the "application suite of the next generation" has decreased. SAP offers customers greater flexibility on their way to becoming a smart company, and thereby relieves pressure in the resource situation of the SAP consulting market.

The extended maintenance provides companies with the time to consider the comprehensive potential of SAP S/4HANA, so that they can focus on protecting existing investments and exploiting innovation potential, while at the same time designing their business processes with flexibility. Expertise development, change management and master data quality are only a few of the important aspects.

When a company switches to SAP S/4HANA, the business processes should definitely be standardized beforehand. In particular, companies operating a complex IT constellation with different ERP systems should absolutely harmonize the constellation first. These migration projects may require a certain amount of time. Starting at an early stage is therefore advisable.

Conclusion:

In providing its maintenance extension, SAP is responding to the demand of its customers. For many of these companies, implementing transformation projects of this complexity by 2025 (the end of maintenance previously supposed) still seems very difficult. (Customer) voices accordingly continued to call on SAP to extend the support for the established Business Suite

However: The extension should by no means serve as an excuse for further delaying migration projects. Rather, it offers the chance to plan and implement projects in greater detail and with greater sustainability. In particular, more time and intensity can be devoted to the S/4HANA preliminary studies. User companies need to stay on the ball and maintain their pace, otherwise they could face a massive backlog of projects.

The fact remains that maintenance extensions will not make SAP ECC better. The product is being and will remain discontinued. There won't be any more new features or new functions for the widely-used ERP system in the future. The necessity of a conversion for SAP customers will remain.

SAP S/4HANA is and will continue to be THE product of SAP bringing companies into the digital future.

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New Planning Reliability through SAP Maintenance Extension

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