Wel­come back to the sec­ond edi­tion of Your SAP Invest­ment Unleashed, a new col­umn from Kris­ten Schef­fler, Vice Pres­i­dent of Cus­tomer Evo­lu­tion for North Amer­i­ca, SAP, and VerNeil Mesech­er, Sr. Direc­tor of Cus­tomer Engage­ment Events Liai­son for North Amer­i­ca, SAP. Togeth­er, they’re part of SAP Cus­tomer Evo­lu­tion, an orga­ni­za­tion focused on sup­port­ing, guid­ing, edu­cat­ing, lis­ten­ing to, and enabling cus­tomers to get the most out of their SAP investments.

With main­stream main­te­nance for the lat­est three enhance­ment pack­ages of SAP ERP 6.0 — includ­ing SAP ERP Cen­tral Com­po­nent (ECC) — end­ing Dec. 31, 2027, fol­lowed by an option­al extend­ed main­te­nance phase until Dec. 31, 2030, many SAP cus­tomers are active­ly assess­ing their options to stay in main­te­nance and move their organization’s ERP invest­ments forward.

In the first edi­tion of this col­umn, we dis­cussed the dif­fer­ences between ​“end of main­stream main­te­nance” and ​“end of life/​support,” detail­ing the four main­te­nance phas­es — main­stream main­te­nance, cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic main­te­nance, extend­ed main­te­nance, and pri­or­i­ty-one sup­port — defined under SAP’s main­te­nance strategy. 

In this edi­tion, we’ll go a step fur­ther by explor­ing what move options are avail­able for SAP ERP cus­tomers fac­ing the end of main­stream main­te­nance, and what resources are avail­able, free with cus­tomers’ exist­ing invest­ments in SAP, to help them plan for the future.

Over the past decades, SAP has been con­tin­u­ous­ly evolv­ing and advanc­ing in the ERP mar­ket. We are tru­ly grate­ful that you, our val­ued cus­tomers, have been on this trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney with us, and we want to demon­strate SAP’s com­mit­ment to leav­ing no cus­tomer behind and sup­port­ing you, regard­less of where you are in your journey. 

1. Move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud. You could take the first step in your cloud trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney and select RISE with SAP to move to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion or pub­lic edi­tion. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pub­lic edi­tion, you will receive a ready-to-run cloud ERP that deliv­ers pre-con­fig­ured best prac­tices to real­ize results imme­di­ate­ly, con­tin­u­ous fea­ture deliv­ery, a new user expe­ri­ence, and mar­ket-lead­ing local­iza­tion. With SAP S/4HANA Cloud, pri­vate edi­tion, you will receive a tai­lored-to-fit cloud ERP that adapts to your organization’s unique trans­for­ma­tion jour­ney. You receive inno­va­tions via bi-annu­al fea­ture pack­ages, cus­tomiza­tion and local­iza­tion capa­bil­i­ties for com­plex sce­nar­ios, and access to the Clean Core dashboard.
2. Move to SAP S/4HANA On-Prem. You could ini­ti­ate a migra­tion to an on-premis­es edi­tion of SAP S/4HANA, with var­i­ous tran­si­tion paths avail­able. With SAP S/4HANA on-prem, you will receive an intu­itive user expe­ri­ence with SAP Fiori, a data­base archi­tec­ture native­ly built on HANA that lever­ages the ben­e­fits of an in-mem­o­ry and col­umn-based data­base, and re-imag­ined busi­ness process­es such as role-based access to busi­ness trans­ac­tions and intel­li­gence through machine learn­ing applications.
3. Upgrade and move lat­er. If you cur­rent­ly have no enhance­ment pack­age or EHP 1 – 5, you could extend your main­stream main­te­nance to 2027 by upgrad­ing to EHP 6 – 8. EHP upgrade efforts can be rel­a­tive­ly high. Main­stream main­te­nance for EHP 6, 7, and 8 runs until Decem­ber 31, 2027, fol­lowed by the option to pur­chase extend­ed main­te­nance, which runs until Decem­ber 31, 2030. 
4. Do noth­ing. You could decide to stay on your cur­rent SAP ERP sys­tem, mov­ing into cus­tomer-spe­cif­ic main­te­nance. How­ev­er, this path will lead to a reduced sup­port scope, no legal or tax changes, and restrict­ed secu­ri­ty patch­es. Com­pli­ance of your sys­tems might even­tu­al­ly be at risk.

Already includ­ed in your main­te­nance invest­ment with SAP are tools, resources, and reports, avail­able at no addi­tion­al cost, which you can lever­age to assist you in deter­min­ing the right inno­va­tion path for you. 

The SAP Cus­tomer Evo­lu­tion team is an addi­tion­al resource avail­able for cus­tomers to dis­cuss the pros and cons of each option and iden­ti­fy rel­e­vant sup­port tools, resources, and reports to assist in the deci­sion-mak­ing process. Below, we dis­cuss some of the resources avail­able to assist you in your migration. 

Just get­ting start­ed in the dis­cov­ery part of the process but not sure where to begin with com­par­ing your options? 

Let’s say you are inter­est­ed in a move to SAP S/4HANA, but are unsure if you want to tran­si­tion to cloud or remain on-prem. The SAP Enter­prise Sup­port Val­ue Map for SAP S/4HANA can help you under­stand what each option would mean for your busi­ness, whether you are con­sid­er­ing a green­field imple­men­ta­tion or eval­u­at­ing which deploy­ment option would be best for you. Through the Val­ue Maps, you receive struc­tured self-paced learn­ings to advance your dig­i­tal skills, access to col­lab­o­ra­tive forums and SAP experts for per­son­al­ized guid­ance, and Con­tin­u­ous Qual­i­ty Checks to mit­i­gate imple­men­ta­tion risks or iden­ti­fy opti­miza­tion potential.

For more infor­ma­tion on all of the avail­able SAP Enter­prise Sup­port Val­ue Maps and to reg­is­ter for access, click here.

Per­haps you’ve made the deci­sion to move to SAP S/4HANA, but you need to under­stand your cur­rent cus­tomiza­tions, as well as define what data you plan to take with you.

Start with the Appli­ca­tion Life­cy­cle Man­age­ment Val­ue Map. From a cus­tom code per­spec­tive, you will under­stand the need to adapt your cus­tom code for SAP S/4HANA and under­stand the Sim­pli­fi­ca­tion Data­base: how to access it, and its impor­tance in adapt­ing your cus­tom code for SAP S/4HANA. You also need to under­stand how to uti­lize the ABAP Test Cock­pit (ATC) in adapt­ing your cus­tom code for SAP S/4HANA. With regards to data vol­ume, this val­ue map can serve as your intro­duc­tion to data vol­ume man­age­ment and data archiv­ing, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion on how to reduce your data­base size pri­or to an SAP S/4HANA con­ver­sion, as well as how to use the Data Vol­ume Man­age­ment (DVM) appli­ca­tion to deter­mine your DVM poten­tial and pre­dict future needs.

Maybe you have decid­ed to remain on SAP ERP but are notic­ing extreme­ly high resource con­sump­tion.

Whether you’re notic­ing extreme­ly high resource con­sump­tion dur­ing spe­cif­ic processes/​times, or per­for­mance prob­lems with typ­i­cal­ly well-per­form­ing trans­ac­tions when­ev­er a spe­cif­ic process is run­ning, the Busi­ness Process Per­for­mance Opti­miza­tion Con­tin­u­ous Qual­i­ty Check (CQC) can help. You can get more infor­ma­tion about this ser­vice here and all oth­er CQCs offered by SAP here. These are free ser­vices for cus­tomers on SAP Enter­prise Support.

Regard­less of your path, the SAP Cus­tomer Evo­lu­tion team is here to sup­port you in your future trans­for­ma­tion, help­ing you define and real­ize the next steps of your busi­ness and IT evo­lu­tion to ensure that you are well-pre­pared for upcom­ing busi­ness opportunities. 

For cus­tomers unde­cid­ed on how to begin their path to SAP S/4HANA, we also offer the SAP Cus­tomer Evo­lu­tion Kit, a cost-free, quick, and effi­cient ser­vice to ele­vate dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion with SAP S/4HANA through 1:1 ses­sions with ded­i­cat­ed SAP experts. 

As always, we invite any feed­back, ideas, and top­ics that you would like to see addressed, so don’t hes­i­tate to con­nect with us. The goal of this col­umn is to help you lever­age your exist­ing invest­ment in SAP to the fullest. You’ve paid for it. Let’s get you using it!

Stay tuned for our next install­ment. Wish­ing you all a peace­ful, very hap­py hol­i­day season!

Your SAP Invest­ment Unleashed is intend­ed to answer your burn­ing ques­tions and address hot top­ics for the SAP com­mu­ni­ty. Please con­tact the authors with your ques­tions, and future edi­tions of this col­umn will address them. Kris­ten Schef­fler can be reached at kristen.​scheffler@​sap.​com, and VerNeil Mesech­er, Jr. can be reached at verneil.​mesecher@​sap.​com.