This part­ner insight was authored by Christo­pher Hesch, CTO & Head of SAP Pre­sales at SEI­DOR North America.

The end of stan­dard main­te­nance in Decem­ber 2027 is no longer a dis­tant con­cern for most SAP ECC cus­tomers. Stay­ing on SAP ECC past that dead­line means pay­ing rough­ly 2% more main­te­nance fees.

While that loom­ing cost is well-known, anoth­er crit­i­cal dead­line often flies under the radar. In Decem­ber 2025, the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty mode that allows SAP ECC func­tion­al­i­ty to con­tin­ue oper­at­ing with­in SAP S/4HANA will expire for on-premise customers.

The less­er-known 2025 dead­line rais­es the stakes. Com­pat­i­bil­i­ty mode has long served as a bridge, allow­ing com­pa­nies to run SAP ECC-style trans­ac­tions in SAP S/4HANA with­out under­go­ing imme­di­ate process trans­for­ma­tion. Once it dis­ap­pears, orga­ni­za­tions still on-premis­es will be forced into more dis­rup­tive con­ver­sions. More impor­tant­ly, they will lose the strate­gic abil­i­ty to decou­ple tech­ni­cal con­ver­sion from busi­ness transformation.

Migrat­ing to SAP Cloud ERP Pri­vate pre­serves that bridge until 2030, grant­i­ng five addi­tion­al years to plan change on more man­age­able terms.

Migrate Now, Trans­form at Your Own Pace

As a glob­al end-to-end tech­nol­o­gy provider and SAP Part­ner with a long his­to­ry along­side IBM, SEI­DOR brings both cred­i­bil­i­ty and a clear mis­sion to the mid-mar­ket migra­tion sto­ry, typ­i­cal­ly for orga­ni­za­tions with rev­enues of $1.5 bil­lion and below. With a foot­print span­ning 85 offices, more than 10,000 employ­ees, over 8,000 cus­tomers, and annu­al rev­enues exceed­ing $1 bil­lion, SEI­DOR is posi­tioned to serve enter­pris­es across industries.

Mean­while, IBM Cloud has been added to the list of hyper­scalers that can run SAP Cloud ERP Pri­vate, along­side AWS, Google, and Microsoft. It is the only cloud sup­ports IBM Pow­er Vir­tu­al Serv­er so that IBM Pow­er cus­tomers can have a least dis­rup­tive path to adopt RISE with SAP jour­ney with­out replat­form or refac­tor­ing off the IBM Pow­er plat­form. With this cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, IBM also marked the gen­er­al avail­abil­i­ty of Brown­field migra­tions at the end of Sep­tem­ber. That devel­op­ment gives cus­tomers a way to move for­ward while car­ry­ing their SAP ECC invest­ments with them.

Many com­pa­nies choose Brown­field for that rea­son, since Green­field often means start­ing from zero and dis­card­ing years of sys­tem devel­op­ment and IT invest­ments. And for cus­tomers requir­ing a more selec­tive path, SEI­DOR can also deliv­er Blue­field migra­tions in part­ner­ship with SNP, giv­ing orga­ni­za­tions the flex­i­bil­i­ty to reduce their data foot­print while mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA.

At the foun­da­tion of this joint approach lies IBM Pow­er Vir­tu­al Serv­er, designed to reduce risks and accel­er­ate time­lines. Because Pow­er Vir­tu­al Serv­er has the con­sis­tent archi­tec­ture stack as IBM Pow­er on-premis­es, migra­tions can be exe­cut­ed 15 – 25% faster than re-plat­form­ing to oth­er cloud providers. That con­sis­ten­cy reduces com­plex­i­ty at every stage.

IBM Pow­er also dri­ves cost effi­cien­cy by pro­vi­sion­ing SAP HANA instances with more gran­u­lar­i­ty, align­ing capac­i­ty with demand and avoid­ing unnec­es­sary over­siz­ing. This advan­tage is espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant for SAP Cloud ERP Pri­vate cus­tomers run­ning large HANA foot­prints above 6TB. Where anoth­er provider might require 23TB of capac­i­ty to sup­port a 16.5TB need, IBM can pro­vi­sion clos­er to 18TB. The result is a low­er total cost of own­er­ship. Beyond cost sav­ings, reli­a­bil­i­ty fur­ther strength­ens the case.

IBM Pow­er has led SAP-cer­ti­fied servers in avail­abil­i­ty for 15 years run­ning, a record that mat­ters for com­pa­nies where uptime is crit­i­cal, pro­vid­ing the con­fi­dence that shift­ing to the cloud won’t come at the expense of stability.

SEIDOR’s AI-Pow­ered Acceleration

Hav­ing the right infra­struc­ture in place does not make the migra­tion chal­lenge dis­ap­pear. The biggest hur­dle for many orga­ni­za­tions is the amount of cus­tom code that has built up in SAP ECC envi­ron­ments over years of use. In some cas­es, tens of thou­sands of objects need to be reviewed, reme­di­at­ed, or retired. Tra­di­tion­al meth­ods for han­dling this back­log can demand as much as 30,000 devel­op­er hours, which explains why so many projects stall before they even begin.

SEI­DOR tack­les this bot­tle­neck with its AI-pow­ered MIGNOW solu­tion. By automat­ing up to 97% of cus­tom code reme­di­a­tion, SEI­DOR elim­i­nates the need for ​“armies” of ABAP devel­op­ers and reduces the reme­di­a­tion work­load to a frac­tion of what it would oth­er­wise be.

In prac­tice, this means cut­ting project dura­tion by 40 – 60% and sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing costs. The tech­ni­cal con­ver­sion no longer needs to be a mul­ti-year under­tak­ing that drains resources; it becomes a faster, more pre­dictable process with min­i­mal disruption.

SEI­DOR builds on these effi­cien­cies with pre­de­fined migra­tion bun­dles that extend val­ue into the future through sub­scrip­tion enti­tle­ments for ongo­ing SAP S/4HANA upgrades. With major releas­es every two years — first in 2025 and then in 2027 — cus­tomers avoid the kind of locked-in sce­nario that plagued SAP ECC.

By stay­ing cur­rent, orga­ni­za­tions max­i­mize ROI, main­tain com­pli­ance, and stay on the clean core path. Keep­ing a clean core makes it eas­i­er to elim­i­nate cus­tom code, adopt stan­dard process­es, and extend capa­bil­i­ties through SAP Busi­ness Tech­nol­o­gy Plat­form with­out under­min­ing future upgrades.

For orga­ni­za­tions ready to take the next step, there are two clear entry points. SEIDOR’s Free Assess­ment uses the SAP Readi­ness Check along­side a brief ques­tion­naire to gen­er­ate a project time­line, cost esti­mate, and rec­om­mend­ed bun­dle. These bun­dles are struc­tured under three-year sub­scrip­tion con­tracts with month­ly pric­ing and are based on cus­tom code com­plex­i­ty and SAP ECC mod­ules in scope, ensur­ing that effort is aligned with the real­i­ties of each cus­tomer environment.

Anoth­er path is to hear direct­ly from the experts. At the IBM TechX­change 2025 con­fer­ence in Orlan­do, I will share the stage with Ming Chris­tensen, IBM Prod­uct Man­age­ment Direc­tor. Our joint ses­sion, Migra­tion Accel­er­a­tion to SAP Cloud ERP Pri­vate on IBM Pow­er Vir­tu­al Serv­er, takes place Tues­day, Octo­ber 7, from 5:00 – 6:00 PM EDT.

One month lat­er, SEI­DOR, IBM, and SAP will con­vene again in New York City for an event at the IBM Inno­va­tion Stu­dio on Wednes­day, Novem­ber 12, 2025. The ses­sion will offer a deep­er look at strate­gies, tools, and proven approach­es to ERP trans­for­ma­tion. Sign up today!

By meet­ing the urgency of migra­tion with the flex­i­bil­i­ty of SEIDOR’s solu­tions, orga­ni­za­tions can move for­ward on their own terms.

Christo­pher Hesch is CTO & Head of SAP Pre­sales at SEI­DOR North America.