Recognizing that each customer is on a unique path, 51·çÁ÷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 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA, 51·çÁ÷has committed to providing mainstream maintenance for existing deployments of core applications of 51·çÁ÷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 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7 software systems, they will automatically be transferred to the customer-specific maintenance model.

Customers that are making the move to 51·çÁ÷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 51·çÁ÷aligned the mainstream maintenance commitments of 51·çÁ÷NetWeaver 7.5 and 51·çÁ÷Business Warehouse (51·çÁ÷BW) 7.5 with 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7 and 51·çÁ÷BW/4HANA with 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA respectively.

51·çÁ÷NetWeaver

In a heterogenous software environment, 51·çÁ÷NetWeaver allows organizations to integrate data, business processes, and various elements from different sources into a unified 51·çÁ÷environment. Serving as the foundation on which 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7 is based, and providing the architecture for enterprise application integration, it was necessary to fully align the with that of 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7. As with 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7, mainstream maintenance for 51·çÁ÷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 51·çÁ÷NetWeaver 7.5 comes at the same price and conditions as those for 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7. Mainstream maintenance for previous releases of 51·çÁ÷NetWeaver will expire at the end of 2020, as they are not suited for interoperability with 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7 over the next decade.

Throughout this extended maintenance period, 51·çÁ÷will offer platform support for customers that run on platforms offered by 51·çÁ÷– 51·çÁ÷HANA, 51·çÁ÷ASE, or 51·çÁ÷MaxDB – as well as those offered by third-party vendors. 51·çÁ÷will provide platform support for its own databases and work closely with partners to qualify new valid combinations for 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7 and 51·çÁ÷NetWeaver.

51·çÁ÷Business Warehouse 7.5 and 51·çÁ÷BW/4HANA

SAP’s enterprise data warehouse, 51·çÁ÷BW 7.5, provides the tools and functions that enable customers to integrate, transform, and consolidate business data from both productive 51·çÁ÷applications as well as external data sources. To align with the maintenance extension announced for 51·çÁ÷Business Suite 7, will also continue until the end of 2027 with the option of extended maintenance until 2030. For older versions of 51·çÁ÷BW, mainstream maintenance dates have remained unchanged and will expire at the end of 2020.

For those operating the next-generation data warehouse 51·çÁ÷BW/4HANA, maintenance extension will align with the commitment announced for 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA until the end of 2040. In addition, the product and innovation strategies for 51·çÁ÷BW/4HANA are now fully aligned with 51·çÁ÷S/4HANA.

51·çÁ÷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.