SAP gave companies running the core applications of Business Suite 7 two more years of mainstream maintenance on February 4, 2020, extending it through the end of 2027 without additional fees or a contractual change for that extension. Teams planning a move to S/4HANA gained more time to organize the work. They also gained a clearer spending decision: SAP offered optional extended maintenance through 2030, but that extra period would cost more. [S4]

For the three years from the start of 2028 through the end of 2030, SAP set the extended-maintenance premium at two percentage points on the existing maintenance basis for the core applications, across its support offerings. That is not the same as adding 2% to a customer's maintenance invoice. A budget needs the contractual base to which the rate applies; the announcement does not supply an individual company's total bill or the cost of moving its systems. [S4]

Staying on Business Suite 7 without buying the extension would lead to a different support arrangement. SAP said customers still using the software who did not choose extended maintenance by the end of 2027 would automatically move to customer-specific maintenance, including help with known problems at unchanged fees. The fee stays level under that fallback; the support model changes. The announcement covers named core applications, including SAP ERP 6.0, Customer Relationship Management 7.0, Supply Chain Management 7.0 and Supplier Relationship Management 7.0; it is not a blanket promise for every SAP product. [S4]

SAP’s own explanation put business-process work ahead of installation. In an interview published by SAP the same day, product-engineering executive Thomas Saueressig said customers should standardize business processes before moving and that many needed to simplify environments containing several enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems. He described a possible sequence beginning with central finance and procurement, then moving to operations, manufacturing and logistics. That is SAP's proposed route, not evidence that every business should migrate in that order. [S3]

For the teams doing that work, the support budget and the process-change plan need separate attention. A company could use the longer window to decide which processes change first, who prepares staff for the change and how the existing system will be supported during the transition. Those are project choices, not benefits delivered automatically by a later maintenance deadline. Neither SAP's release nor its interview establishes a reduction in workload or a lower total migration cost. [S3][S4]

DSAG, the German-speaking SAP user group, welcomed the commitment after pressing for planning certainty beyond SAP's earlier end-2025 guarantee. Its February 4 response also urged customers not to treat the extra time as permission to keep waiting. One purchasing issue remained on its agenda: a licensing model that would take existing licenses into account in the cloud. DSAG explicitly described that as its vision, not an entitlement secured by the maintenance announcement. [S2]

Source documents

  1. SAP Extends Its Innovation Commitment for SAP S/4HANA, Provides Clarity and Choice on SAP Business Suite 7https://news.sap.com/2020/02/sap-s4hana-maintenance-2040-clarity-choice-sap-business-suite-7/
  2. SAP Leaders Share the Inside Story Behind Extending SAP S/4HANA Maintenance Until 2040https://news.sap.com/2020/02/interview-extending-maintenance-for-sap-s4hana/
  3. DSAG bewirkt Planungssicherheit für die digitale Transformation – SAP-Zusagen bis 2040https://impulsant.dsag.de/formate/pressemeldung/dsag-bewirkt-planungssicherheit-fuer-die-digitale-transformation-sap-zusagen-bis-2040/