SAP ECC is approaching end of maintenance. Here’s how to plan your move.

SAP ECC has reliably run processes at thousands of companies for years. But the clock is ticking. Mainstream maintenance ends in 2027 and can be extended to 2030 for an additional fee. Plan now, and you can take your time choosing the best route instead of migrating under time pressure later. We take the complexity out of it, showing you what matters for your system and how to approach the move in practice. On this page, you’ll find the key dates, your options, and our proven approach.

Key dates at a glance

• End of 2027: Mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC (SAP Business Suite 7) ends.
• Through the end of 2030: Extended maintenance available for a surcharge on top of the existing maintenance basis.
• Through 2040: SAP has committed to maintenance for S/4HANA, which gives you planning certainty for the move.

What the end of maintenance means in practice

Once maintenance ends, SAP no longer delivers security updates or bug fixes. That creates security and compliance risks and makes adapting to new legal requirements, in areas such as tax and regulatory reporting, increasingly labor-intensive. There’s also a practical effect. The closer the deadline gets, the scarcer experienced migration resources become on the market. Starting your project early lets you secure quality and better terms.

Your three ways out of SAP ECC

• S/4HANA On-Premise: Migrating within your own data center, with full control over your system and infrastructure
• Private Cloud: Your existing processes and extensions stay in place while operations move to the cloud
• Public Cloud: A fresh start based on the SAP standard, quick to implement and highly predictable

Our article “Greenfield vs. Brownfield” answers whether it’s better to convert your system or rebuild it from scratch.

Running ECC securely until you migrate

Until you make the move, we keep your ECC system up to date and secure while preparing it for the migration. The latest enhancement package, EHP 8, meets the requirements for extended maintenance and clears the technical path to S/4HANA. Switching to the SAP Business Partner approach, which S/4HANA requires anyway, is the ideal opportunity to clean up master data and improve data quality. You can already use the New General Ledger and New Asset Accounting in ECC, speeding up your period-end closing today.

Our approach: three stages to a solid roadmap

Our Precheck assesses your system against the technical requirements for a brownfield migration and gets you to a roadmap in three stages:

• Preparation: You give us secure remote access (VPN) and an SAP user. We run the SAP Readiness Check, enable logging for your custom developments, and connect your system so we can analyze it.
• Assessment: We analyze which functions S/4HANA handles differently from ECC, known as Simplification Items. In addition, we carry out database sizing and a custom code analysis, check for faulty data, and test add-ons, interfaces, and Business Functions. We also scope out the switch to the Business Partner approach.
• Results presentation: We present all results sorted by project phase, together with a detailed report on your custom developments. From this, we build your roadmap with milestones, duration, and costs, along with a detailed quote for the migration.