SAP has extended support for Business Suite 7 by two years, bowing to customer pressure.
The product was due to hit end of life in 2025, with the company firmly encouraging users to migrate to SAP S/4HANA. However, it announced this week that mainstream support will now continue until 2027, with extended support available until 2030.
Simultaneously, the business committed to providing maintenance for S/4 HANA until 2040.
Michael Kleinemeier, Member of the Executive Board for SAP Digital Business Services, said: “We are determined to make our customers successful. The extended commitment to SAP Business Suite 7 and the long-lasting support for SAP S/4HANA is at the core of this, providing our customers choice and flexibility in planning for the right path to the future.”
SAP Co-CEO Christian Klein added that there’s still a strong movement towards SAP S/4HANA among the majority of customers, citing a survey conducted by the Americas SAP User Group.
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“[The survey] did not show a single customer not planning to migrate to SAP S/4HANA,” he said. “In addition, the German-Speaking User Group indicates in their lately published survey that customer investments in SAP S/4HANA are increasing significantly.”
The UK and Ireland SAP User Group welcomed the decision to extend support for Business Suite 7, describing it as a “welcome reprieve for end users struggling to plan huge migrations”.
The group’s chairman, Paul Cooper, said: “Back at our annual user conference in December, we highlighted how the end of life of Business Suite 7 (ERP/ECC 6.0) and lack of clarity around the roadmap for S/4HANA have not helped the customer relationship.
“For organisations that have invested heavily in Business Suite 7, today’s announcement will hopefully provide them with greater certainty and more time to plan a potential move to S/4HANA.”
Not everyone has welcomed the news, though. CEO of software firm IFS, Darren Roos, said: “While extending support to 2027 may provide the illusion of addressing customer concern, it doesn’t help them. It only delays the problem,” he said. “Even with a two-year extension, there simply aren’t the skills or resources available to migrate everyone by that deadline. For many customers, there still isn’t real, quantifiable value in S/4 HANA.
