As reported by a number of media shops and confirmed by SAP CEO Christian Klein throughout its This fall 2024 earnings name, SAP will provide an extra three years of assist for some on-premises ERP (enterprise useful resource planning) prospects past the prevailing prolonged upkeep assist of 2030. This information got here as a shock for a lot of ERP prospects globally who’ve been struggling to plan and full their ECC to S/4HANA migrations underneath the RISE with SAP providing earlier than the tip of 2027, which is the present mainstream upkeep finish date. Many of those prospects doubtlessly wouldn’t have accomplished the transfer even by the tip of 2030, the prolonged upkeep finish date.
Whereas there was regular adoption of S/4HANA Cloud Personal Version underneath RISE with SAP, there have been no sturdy indicators that this adoption was accelerating at a better charge. Two core causes contributing to this:
There’s vital prices and time related to the sheer quantity of large transformation and programs migration enterprise. Some prospects, combating price range points whereas working a enterprise underneath the present robust macroeconomic circumstances and geopolitical instability, had reservations in regards to the prolonged time that it might take them to understand the ROI on the migration funding.
The opposite side hampering a better charge of adoption of S/4HANA is the advanced technical and third-party purposes panorama that’s carefully tied with the shoppers’ ERP programs — every with their very own end-of-support deadlines, migration prices, licensing complexity, and technical interdependency with totally different model of the ERP programs’ underlying tech stack. This makes the case for simple and quick S/4HANA migration severely constrained for patrons, even after they have interaction extremely mature programs integrators to help with multiyear migration applications.
SAP has acknowledged these challenges by what seems to be a selective extension of assist — with circumstances. Particulars of the brand new assist announcement are as follows:
Within the first half of 2025, SAP will announce a cloud subscription transition possibility designed for ERP prospects with massive and really advanced IT landscapes who want extra time to remodel on their RISE with SAP journey and transfer to S/4HANA.
This feature, the SAP ERP private-edition transition possibility, will include an SAP ERP cloud subscription, complemented with providers designed to facilitate the transition to RISE with SAP and keep prospects’ enterprise continuity.
The choice shall be supplied for the interval from 2031 till the tip of 2033.
The SAP CEO confirmed that that is not a prolongation of the mainstream upkeep for past the 2020-communicated deadlines of the tip of 2027 and can be not a prolongation of the prolonged upkeep end-of-2030 deadline.
SAP is to launch extra data to the market within the first half of 2025, with further particulars on the providing.
Whereas some media shops have reported that any prospects who signal a RISE with SAP contract are those who obtain the above provide, Forrester has been unable to verify these statements, because the official particulars are nonetheless forthcoming. As for now, based mostly on Klein’s solutions to investor questions throughout the earnings name, it’s actually not a blanket provide to all prospects who join and decide to a RISE with SAP contract however is somewhat very depending on sure large-scale prospects with extremely advanced software landscapes and third-party software technical stack footprint dependency that forestalls them from successfully shifting to S/4HANA quicker. SAP seems to offer the shoppers a neater pathway to transition these third-party purposes to the SAP options/product stack. Forrester is trying ahead to analyzing this side additional with the official launch of extra data from SAP within the coming months.
For extra insights on SAP, S/4HANA cloud transformations, on-premises ERP assist, RISE, GROW, or this particular announcement, purchasers can guide time with me (through an inquiry or steerage session).
