back to article SAP customers on brink of ERPocalypse as 2025 support cliff looms for ECC

Half of SAP clients relying on ECC – used by the majority of ERP customers – will fail to qualify for extended support beyond 2025, according to the German vendor's own figures. Released in a slide session during a German-speaking user group conference last month, the data shows that 50 percent of ECC systems will not be in …

  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Why do I keep thinking "never give a customer reason to review the market"?

  2. Roland6 Silver badge

    “ …they just want to sell their products and services."

    “ He said most ECC customers were not convinced by SAP's arguments that to innovate and transform their business, they need to be on S/4HANA, preferably in the cloud.”

    A statement I suggest you could replace SAP and S/4HANA with practically any cloud vendor and their subscription cloud offering Eg. Microsoft and 365, and for it to be true.

    I do think many oil IT have forgotten, their customers businesses are about selling their products and services, spending money and time on migrating to the latest IT fashion, is a long way down the list of priorities.

    1. Lonpfrb

      Re: “ …they just want to sell their products and services."

      CAPEX to OPEX is a significant prize along with the opportunity to Simplify. So there are business reasons to change. The long term cost of ownership and technical debt will vary but are often significant.

      1. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: “ …they just want to sell their products and services."

        >” CAPEX to OPEX is a significant prize”

        For those who are selling subscription services, not so much for businesses making the investment and purchasing services.

        >” the opportunity to Simplify”

        Nice sound bite, but much depends on what is actually meant by “simplify” and thus who’s version of “simplify” is being implemented.

  3. Roland6 Silver badge

    “ and instead try to make the leap to S/4HANA”

    Based on previous experience, I suspect SAP don’t have the tools to support a direct migration from EHP5 to S/4HANA, they assumed customers would upgrade via EHP6, as this means more service revenues for SAP and its partners…

    I bet the competition have tool sets that will support migration off SAP on their ERP platforms…

    1. jmappleby

      Re: “ and instead try to make the leap to S/4HANA”

      I think in most cases, customers will do a two-step upgrade. EhP 0/1/2/3/4/5 -> EhP7/8, then migration to S/4HANA. This can be done in one technical downtime window, if your timeline allows it. That way you only have to test once.

      Really I don't think any of this is a big deal. Customers are well aware of their support window ending for hardware, operating system, database and application. This is something they have been on top of for 15 years. It's not surprising that a lot of customers are still below EhP7, because they may have plans for a major upgrade anyhow to S/4HANA. They are delaying so they don't have to do two upgrades.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: “ and instead try to make the leap to S/4HANA”

        But why have SAP come out with this statement now? It sounds as if they're wanting to rustle up a bit of panic buying.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: a bit of panic buying

          With most local authorities in England facing HUGE budget shortfalls any IT spending will be at the very bottom of the pile.

          For example, Hampshire is facing at least £124 million of cuts in FY2025/26. Something has to give. Unless SAP and Oracle can come up with a way of reducing their customers costs AND RISKS, then they have no chance of selling even a used bog roll.

      2. Roland6 Silver badge

        Re: “ and instead try to make the leap to S/4HANA”

        But with Brexit and CoViD I expect many businesses have had 3+ years of lacklustre trading and increased costs, so they can be excused for sweating their assets for longer.

        In the past I suspect SAP would have simply extended support. However, now they want the cloud subscriptions which customers have to pay regardless of the health of their business creating the revenues needed to pay for the cloud subscriptions…

    2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Pirate

      Re: bet the competition have tool sets

      unless that competition just happens to be.... [drumrol] Oracle.

      After the Brum fiasco who would even consider big red as an alternative to SAP?

      Frying Pan and Fire...

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