SAP has taken a bold promise to support S/4HANA till 2040, meaning that businesses switching today will get over two decades’ use out of the new platform.
SAP Co-CEO Christian Klein says "Enterprises are keen to move to S/4HANA, but some of them won’t be ready by 2025. The deadline SAP had previously set to end support for its legacy software. For those companies, It’s not so much about the technology, it’s really about adapting long-standing business processes, adapting to the needs of the customers in the digital world”.
There’s also been some concern that an SAP skills shortage could leave some customers without the help they need to migrate their systems. SAP will provide mainstream maintenance for Business Suite 7 up to the end of 2027, followed by extended maintenance until the end of 2030.
Extended maintenance will cost an additional 2 percent of the annual license fee, on top of the 20 percent fee for mainstream maintenance.
The new cut-off date will affect users of SAP’s core enterprise software component, ERP 6.0, and the core applications of SAP Business Suite 7, including Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management and Supplier Relationship Management.