SAP ECC ends 2027 - what are your options?

The support for SAP Business Suite 7, which includes SAP ECC 6, will cease in 2027. This presents a challenge for IT teams who have spent years perfecting their ECC abilities and modifying their systems to precisely meet their business objectives. Do they decide to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA, the most recent version, or do they decide to stick with the ECC system they are familiar with and trust?

But, upgrading to SAP S/4HANA is not just another straightforward ECC upgrade; rather, it is the creation of an altogether new system based on SAP's own HANA in-memory database. It calls for a fresh set of abilities that internal teams might not possess. Also, a new software license deal with SAP must be arranged, with the option to convert the current license agreement. Therefore it is simple to understand why SAP owners are carefully assessing their options given the numerous unknowns and the possible damage to mission-critical business systems.

But what choices are those? Let's examine the most popular strategies used.

1. Retain
2. Revamp
3. Rise

Option 1: Retain your ECC

Moving to SAP S/4HANA may appear like a costly and hazardous option for clients whose ECC system is reliable, operates smoothly, and requires little maintenance and support effort. It also has the potential to create disruption and delay. These firms will need to conduct a cost analysis of the premium ongoing support costs after 2027, the maintenance workload, and any potential long-term business requirements that cannot be accommodated by the outdated ECC system. They should stay on ECC as is if the premium support expenses look less expensive than switching to SAP SAP S/4HANA before 2027.

A different, more forward-looking strategy would be to continue using ECC while moving everything to the cloud. This will save infrastructure costs, boost agility, and aid in getting ready for S4/HANA in the future. Although though you will still have to pay more for ECC support and might require advice on licensing once you're in the cloud, this advances your modernisation efforts.

Option 2: Revamp to SAP S/4HANA

Smart IT leaders are utilizing the 2027 deadline as a catalyst to examine the business case for switching to SAP S/4HANA rather than putting the issue off. While some people choose to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA while staying in their current location, more and more people are doing both in order to take advantage of the extra benefits that the top public cloud providers have to offer. A cloud-based SAP S/4HANA offers the groundwork for a business that has been genuinely digitally transformed, from scalability and cost optimization to agility and access to the newest innovations.

But how do we go about doing this? Do you adopt a staged, gradual approach or do you go all out with a total transformation? Let's examine the options:

Greenfield: fresh beginning

The SAP environment has developed into a complex beast in many organizations, with substantial customization, difficult-to-manage and difficult-to-upgrade coding, as well as possible business processes that have deviated over time from best practices. When switching to SAP S/4HANA on cloud, it's the ideal opportunity to start fresh, gain access to the newest platform and the innovations it supports.

An ERP system that is built from the ground up rather than trying to retrofit complex code into a new environment will better serve the demands of organizations whose businesses have changed and grown over time and who need to update their business processes.

The drawbacks of this choice? Everything must be completely constructed and rebuilt from the ground up, including the pieces that are already functioning properly, thus there is a large upfront expense. To maintain legal compliance, businesses will also need to prepare how to retrieve their previous data.

Brownfield: better future possibilities with the same framework

With a brownfield conversion, your ECC is replicated in SAP S/4HANA exactly as it is now, with all of your present customizations retained and some brand-new functionality added. The least disruptive choice for the company's users, but with the fewest commercial advantages from process improvements. The more advanced and comprehensive platform can subsequently be used in the business process enhancements.

Hybrid : gradual transition

This is a middle ground between the two radical greenfield and brownfield approaches, offering more conversion benefits than the brownfield strategy while avoiding the overwhelming scale, additional costs, and hazards of greenfield. Also, it makes it possible to employ some of the new, sophisticated SAP S/4HANA features right away, which would otherwise be challenging to integrate after the initial go-live.

Selective Data Transition (SDT) solutions can help in this situation to support the scope of the transformation and its effects on the data in the source and destination systems, speeding up the data conversion from the old ECC system to the new SAP S/4HANA configuration. The addition of subsequent waves of change can be done more quickly and with less impact on the business over time.

This decision is viewed by many as striking a healthy balance between modernizing and starting over without reinventing the wheel. The improved agility also better fits with the needs of the business and the constantly shifting external environment in which firms today operate.

Option 3: Rise with SAP

Many organizations may find that parts of their ECC are more difficult to maintain in terms of infrastructure, inhouse teams, maintenance fees and ever growing enhancement needs from business that demands your IT budget for Big four consultants round the year. Future Enterprises area already on a path to digital business transformation Post-Covid world scenarios. Facing a change in how they operated, C-suite executives reevaluated priorities, recognizing the ability to transact business online and to work remotely -- and to be good at both those things -- had become essential. That put digital transformation and the move to cloud at the top of the list.

By substituting On-prem ECC to Rise with SAP, CIO’s are cutting down on their IT spends by 40%, making organization future ready with S/4HANA’s flagship in-memory database that provides improved performance for complex business processes. S/4HANA offers increased scalability, and the in-memory design of SAP’s HANA database increases processing speeds. Read more usecase my page for Top 6 reasons why you should migrate to SAP S4HANA cloud

Summary

Post covid world demands flexibility for work from anywhere, any device, scalable, cost-efficient and performance driven SAAS product to call your business future ready. While fortune clients are exploring ChatGPT for automating routine and mundane task, we have witnessed surge in Fortune 100 CIO’s inquiring for what and how we can automate in SAP for out of inventory scenarios, stock transfers, sales orders, purchasing function or predict repair & maintenance for key equipment. CIO’s are future proofing their ERP strategy to call it Data driven, Future ready, Intelligent enterprises which is only natural choice to Rise. ?