In the second quarter of 2025, SAP will announce an offering called “SAP ERP, private edition, transition option.” This cloud subscription service is designed to help large customers with complex installations on a RISE with SAP journey from SAP ERP systems to SAP cloud ERP.
Here, we will give a brief preview on what this offering will be about and how customers will benefit from it.
Already today, thousands of SAP customers have successfully leveraged SAP cloud solutions to transform their businesses, achieve agility, and increase efficiencies. We see our customers unlocking new innovations through modernization of their business processes and embracing a cloud operating model. For most SAP customers, it is not a matter of whether they are going to move from their legacy systems, but a question of how quickly they can do this in the overall context of their business and IT transformation.
As we approach 2030 and the end of extended maintenance for on-premise SAP ERP systems, this transformation becomes even more important. Continuing to use these systems beyond 2030 will become increasingly challenging and risk prone, as, for example, third-party products like older Java versions will no longer be supported from the respective vendors.
On the other hand, we know that SAP customers with very large and complex on-premise IT landscapes — including a large number of SAP ERP systems, some in the hundreds — require flexibility to move each part of their landscape to the cloud with the pace and agility needed to support evolving business requirements.
To help customers in this situation better prepare for the future, we will introduce a new cloud subscription offering, SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, designed to help our largest and most complex customers plan, execute and succeed in their cloud transformation.
This new offering will be an SAP ERP cloud subscription centered around SAP ECC, along with a set of dedicated services to help with the transformation to SAP cloud ERP. It will also support business continuity with patches for security, legal and software issues. It will be available for purchase starting in 2028 and will be active for usage from 2031-2033. SAP is pre-disclosing this offering because we understand that customers with complex landscapes need advance notice, hence we want to give sufficient time for planning purposes.
It is an additional and non-mandatory offering. Customers who are planning to complete their transformation journey by the end of 2030 will not need it. SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, is intended for customers who require additional time and support.
The offering will have a set of conditions, including:
- The scope of products will be centered around SAP ECC; it will not include the full scope of SAP Business Suite 7 that is only available for subscription until end of 2030. SAP will make the eligible scope of products transparent starting later this year.
- Systems relevant for the SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, need to be moved to SAP ERP, private edition prior to the end of 2030.
- In order to be able to subscribe to the new offering from 2031 to latest end of 2033, a set of preparations are required: SAP HANA is the only supported database for the new subscription offering; there will be a set of further adjustments needed, e.g. as third-party technology, such as older versions of Java, are no longer supported.
- More details will be announced closer to availability-to-purchase in 2028.
The natural next step and target after utilizing the new offering would then be a transition to SAP cloud ERP.
To clarify, we would like to emphasize that this is not a maintenance prolongation of SAP ERP. There are no changes for customers running on-premise SAP ERP systems after 2030.
The new offering, SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, will come at an expanded fee in 2031-2033 compared to a comparable ERP cloud subscription before 2031. Naturally, due to the complexity in offering such a service, this is targeted to larger and complex systems. More details will be shared with the broader launch in Q2 2025 and once we move closer to the contractual availability of the offering in 2028.
Feel encouraged to contact your SAP account executive or SAP partner to learn more and get started planning.
Stefan Steinle is executive vice president and head of Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management at SAP.