Blog-Series: Pitfalls and Pathways to the final S/4HANA Release 2023 and insights into transforming your entire Application Landscape

No Usage Rights or Maintenance for On-Prem SAP Products after 2025/2027: The Risks of Compatibility Scope affect many S/4HANA Users in 2025

In this blog series, we aim to highlight the pitfalls associated with expiring usage rights and maintenance after 2025 for SAP ECC, S/4HANA with Compatibility Scope, and other applications in your landscape. We will also discuss the transition and roadmap towards a future-proof and sustainable S/4HANA-centric application landscape. Additionally, we will cover transition methods and operating models, noting that conversions will no longer be possible after 2026, and the popular on-premises operation will face future restrictions. The usage rights and maintenance for the Compatibility Scope will end in 2025; if you transitioned to S/4HANA via conversion or implemented an early version of S/4HANA, you are likely affected. This blog is therefore directed at all those responsible for SAP ECC systems, S/4HANA systems, and other SAP applications.

Part 1

SAP ECC 6 – Maintenance End in 12/2025 and Potential Operation until 2027/2030

Yes, you read that correctly. The maintenance end for SAP ECC 6 is still generally set for 2025, and only under certain conditions can maintenance be extended until 2027 or even be available as Extended Maintenance until 2030.

To take advantage of the regular maintenance until the end of 2027, as widely reported, your SAP ECC 6 system must include at least EHP 6 or higher. For SAP ECC 6 systems with an EHP lower than 6, maintenance will end on 12/31/2025. Any potential upgrade to EHP 6 or higher to continue receiving maintenance must be completed by the end of 2025.

We recommend avoiding Extended Maintenance after 2027. Although it is possible to book Extended Maintenance for SAP ECC for the period from 2028 to 2030, the service comes with limitations and additional costs. The basic requirement for booking Extended Maintenance is an up-to-date SAP ECC system at EHP 6 or higher and the conclusion of an S/4HANA license agreement by the end of 2027 at the latest.

Extended Maintenance only covers the core components, and compatibility with other SAP products after 2027 may no longer be ensured due to the lack of updates. This can particularly lead to integration issues with newer releases of cloud applications, whose updates are inevitably carried out. The cost for Extended Maintenance is an additional 2 percentage points based on the entire SAP landscape/maintenance, leading to an overall cost increase of 8% – 12%, depending on the maintenance contract.

Additionally, the NetWeaver release levels and corresponding OS and DB release levels described below must be considered.

For the Compatibility Scope, the ECC code in the S/4HANA framework, not only will maintenance end on December 31, 2025, but usage rights will also expire. This means that both conversion customers and Greenfield customers of the early releases face an end of usage unless they initiate a corresponding migration project. Additionally, it is anticipated that SAP will remove the Compatibility Scope with one of the upcoming releases. We will go into more detail on this in the following episodes.

You should also take a close look under the hood of your ECC 6 system in a timely manner. Starting in 2026, only the following Netweaver stacks will be supported:

– Netweaver AS JAVA 7.5x

– Netweaver AS ABAP 7.31, 7.40, 7.5x (all other releases will no longer be supported)

We recommend standardizing all your SAP systems on Netweaver 7.5x, including AS ABAP.

Even though no new features will be released for SAP ECC, please do not forget to regularly apply security patches according to your IT governance. The topic of antivirus protection should also not be underestimated if you are receiving tunneled data and documents from external sources into your SAP system.

If you are already operating your applications on a HANA database, it must be running on version HANA 2.0 SP7 or SP8 by July 2025 at the latest.

– HANA 2.0 SP5 will expire in June 2025

– HANA 2.0 SP6 has already expired in December 2023

– HANA 2.0 SP7 will expire in December 2026

– HANA 2.0 SP8 will be released in November 2024 and will expire in December 2028

For other database vendors, we refer to the respective manufacturer and recommend checking the corresponding SAP PAM (Product Availability Matrix).

Several older releases from operating system vendors are also expiring, so you should upgrade to the latest possible and valid release, considering your IT governance and the SAP PAM. These could be, for example, SUSE Linux 15 SP6 and Windows Server 2022.

Many SAP ECC system operators also use the Business Connector and the Solution Manager. We would like to point out in advance that the Business Connector will expire on December 31, 2025, and the Solution Manager on December 31, 2027, both without the possibility of an extension through Extended Maintenance. The rather rare APO users should also note that APO will also expire in 2025, necessitating a switch to PP/DS in S/4HANA. We will discuss the details and other applications that are expiring in one of the next episodes.

A quick tip: If you are currently using a database other than HANA DB and plan to sign an on-premises license agreement in preparation for the S/4HANA transformation, you will be required to pay double maintenance fees for both your current database and the HANA database. You can avoid these double database maintenance fees by replacing your current database with the HANA database as a preliminary project, which can be done with relatively little effort and is purely a technical change. However, please note that you will need certified hardware for this, unless you are running your systems with a provider or on a hyperscaler.

Preview of the Next Episode: Transition Strategies and the Path to the final S/4HANA Release 2023

In the next episode, we will discuss transition methods and operating models. As we delve into S/4HANA, we will focus particularly on the expiration of the Compatibility Scope and the older S/4HANA releases up to 1909, as well as their Extended Maintenance until 12/31/2025, allowing customers to smoothly transition to the final Release 2023. We will also explain what makes the final release unique and why the release cycles and maintenance durations are changing.