Why SAP may be mulling 2030 end of maintenance for legacy ERP

By 2030, 40 percent of SAP customers currently using its legacy ERP systems will still not have migrated to the latest software, prompting the business apps giant to rethink its support deadline.

Or so says business consultancy Gartner. In 2020, SAP put back the mainstream support deadline for customers using its Business Suite 7 (BS7) applications – including the ERP software SAP ECC 6.0 – from 2025 until 2027, with extended support available until 2030 at a 2 percent premium. Since then, Europe’s largest software vendor has stuck to the deadline, and few commentators have suggested it would budge.

Last month, SAP suggested its largest customers might be given some room to maneuver. It is expected to announce a cloud subscription transition option designed for ERP customers with large and very complex IT landscapes who need more time to make the switch via RISE with SAP, the vendor’s lift-shift-and-transform cloud migration plan offered by a group of cloud and SI partners.

The new deal is expected for customers using services designed to help the transition to RISE with SAP and maintain customers’ business continuity. “The option will be offered for the period from 2031 until the end of 2033,” SAP’s spokesperson said in January.

However, in a paper detailing SAP customer options in moving from ECC on-prem to S/4HANA, either in the cloud or on-prem, Gartner outlines some of its assumptions.

“It has been over nine years since SAP S/4HANA was released, yet Gartner estimates that over 60 percent of SAP customers remain on ECC6 on-premises with no decision yet to move.”

By 2030, four in ten SAP ECC customers today will still use ECC in key business areas, Gartner estimates. The prospect of such a large number of the customer base going out of support – and perhaps relying on third-party support – would lead “SAP to reconsider its maintenance end date and cloud migration strategy.”

However, following last month’s news of its concession to the services allowing cloud migration beyond 2030, SAP CEO Christian Klein told investors: “It’s not about the extension of on-premises maintenance.”

Nonetheless, Gartner has reasons to believe the position may shift once the commercial reality starts to bite.

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“While Gartner has no indications from SAP that the ECC support deadline will be extended beyond 2030, the slower pace of S/4HANA adoption by existing ECC customers does draw SAP’s claim into question,” the paper states.

“Annual support is an extremely profitable part of SAP’s business, and the limited uptake of its newer offerings may necessitate it to reconsider its current approach. As a result, some customers opt to delay a decision and wait to see if SAP reconsiders its position and extends the deadline,” Gartner predicts.

Third-party support is a viable option for organizations considering keeping their ECC systems after the mainstream support deadline and after 2030, it adds.

“Gartner speaks with many SAP customers who are unable to create a compelling business case for moving to S/4HANA. The primary driver for many is SAP’s claim that ECC will no longer be supported beyond 2030,” the paper continues.

“However, with approximately two-thirds of SAP ECC customers yet to take any action toward moving to S/4HANA, customers who struggle to quantify S/4HANA business value should evaluate whether staying on ECC for the near term is a viable option. Part of that evaluation includes considering support options, whether they are from SAP or a third party, such as Rimini Street, Spinnaker Support, or Support Revolution.”

SAP has long argued that a strong business case exists to migrate from ECC to S/4HANA, especially in the cloud. Greater speed and agility in financial and operational control are among the benefits, it claims. ®