As a trusted partner in the move to the Intelligent Enterprise, SAP has continued to make its customers’ transformation journeys as easy and seamless as possible.
Recognizing that each customer is on a unique path, SAP has provided increased flexibility by extending maintenance commitments to its various software, database, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions in order to allow customers to undertake their complex business transformations at their own pace.
To help ensure a safe transition to SAP S/4HANA, SAP has committed to providing mainstream maintenance for existing deployments of core applications of SAP Business Suite 7 software until the end of 2027, followed by optional extended maintenance until the end of 2030. For customers that wish to leverage the extended maintenance offerings, they will incur a premium of two percentage points on the existing maintenance basis for these core applications. For those that do not wish to extend their maintenance support beyond 2027 but choose to carry on with SAP Business Suite 7 software systems, they will automatically be transferred to the customer-specific maintenance model.
Customers that are making the move to SAP S/4HANA as part of their journey to the Intelligent Enterprise want to fully recognize its benefits and capabilities so that they can, in turn, innovate their business processes. With any transition, support and maintenance of legacy products are needed to protect existing environments as customers move toward the future. This is why SAP aligned the mainstream maintenance commitments of SAP NetWeaver 7.5 and SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) 7.5 with SAP Business Suite 7 and SAP BW/4HANA with SAP S/4HANA respectively.
SAP NetWeaver
In a heterogenous software environment, SAP NetWeaver allows organizations to integrate data, business processes, and various elements from different sources into a unified SAP environment. Serving as the foundation on which SAP Business Suite 7 is based, and providing the architecture for enterprise application integration, it was necessary to fully align the maintenance strategy of SAP NetWeaver 7.5 with that of SAP Business Suite 7. As with SAP Business Suite 7, mainstream maintenance for SAP NetWeaver 7.5 is prolongated until the end of 2027, followed by an optional extended maintenance phase until the end of 2030. This extended maintenance phase for SAP NetWeaver 7.5 comes at the same price and conditions as those for SAP Business Suite 7. Mainstream maintenance for previous releases of SAP NetWeaver will expire at the end of 2020, as they are not suited for interoperability with SAP Business Suite 7 over the next decade.
Throughout this extended maintenance period, SAP will offer platform support for customers that run on platforms offered by SAP – SAP HANA, SAP ASE, or SAP MaxDB – as well as those offered by third-party vendors. SAP will provide platform support for its own databases and work closely with partners to qualify new valid combinations for SAP Business Suite 7 and SAP NetWeaver.
SAP Business Warehouse 7.5 and SAP BW/4HANA
SAP’s enterprise data warehouse, SAP BW 7.5, provides the tools and functions that enable customers to integrate, transform, and consolidate business data from both productive SAP applications as well as external data sources. To align with the maintenance extension announced for SAP Business Suite 7, maintenance for SAP BW 7.5 will also continue until the end of 2027 with the option of extended maintenance until 2030. For older versions of SAP BW, mainstream maintenance dates have remained unchanged and will expire at the end of 2020.
For those operating the next-generation data warehouse SAP BW/4HANA, maintenance extension will align with the commitment announced for SAP S/4HANA until the end of 2040. In addition, the product and innovation strategies for SAP BW/4HANA are now fully aligned with SAP S/4HANA.
SAP has always been committed to providing its customers with the support they need to implement projects and solutions and will continue to do so as they move towards a more intelligent future.
Karl Kessler is vice president of Product Management for ABAP Platform at SAP.
Lothar Henkes is vice president of Product Management for Enterprise Data Warehouse at SAP.
