December 31, 2027 is when SAP is officially ending mainstream maintenance for the customers of its SAP Business Suite 7, including SAP ECC 6. A further extension of the date is now unlikely, given the fact that the prior 2025 support deadline was once extended after customers sought more time to upgrade to SAP S/4HANA in 2020. For enterprises that have delayed migrating or upgrading to SAP S/4HANA, now is the time to kick-start or accelerate the project.
The advantage of Rise with SAP
RISE with SAP is a cloud-powered transformation-as-a-service offering to help organisations drive fuller value faster from SAP implementations. The offering brings together S/4HANA ERP in the cloud for virtually all business needs, industry-best practices and extensibility, SAP Business Network access including Ariba, analytics and business process intelligence, intelligent process re-engineering as well as outcome-based services from SAP and its partners in one solution.
RISE with SAP and S/4HANA in the cloud can help your organisation quickly and easily adopt SAP solutions with an infrastructure that you can quickly provision without upfront cost for hardware or long-term commitment. For instance, with SAP S/4HANA on AWS public cloud, your organisation pays only according to usage while enjoying extensive, results-driven, high-performing services.
The added advantage with RISE with SAP is that it provides the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of cloud-powered SAP solutions while removing the guesswork and complexity of having multiple contract agreements out of enterprise planning. SAP offers bundled products at a single price, helping your organisation conveniently manage SLAs, operations, and issues management with one contract.
For SAP users, SAP S/4HANA on-premises or in the cloud is now the essential business transformation tool to create and run the digital enterprise of the future. What was complex with SAP ECC, namely analytics, is much easier to run with S/4HANA. It simplifies analytics and helps your organisation run highly predictive reports, all in the cloud.
Why the 2027 deadline must be tackled now
As the 2027 deadline looms, a torrent of migrations from SAP Business Suite to S/4HANA are now being handled by SAP partners, given that the pandemic had knocked off two years from everyone’s business cycles. This is squeezing executive time and escalating vendor costs for SAP migrations and upgrades. SAP resource demand is set to peak soon as more and more enterprises opt for the advanced capabilities of S/4HANA.
From SAP, an optional maintenance service is available for Business Suite until 2030, but it involves a two-percentage-point increase in terms of yearly maintenance costs. On the other hand, migration to S/4HANA through RISE with SAP gives your organisation much more value — the cutting edge of end-to-end analytics, automated workflows and next-generation intelligent processes to transform your operations, among a host of other benefits.
As you explore the migration or upgrade journey for a cloud-powered business transformation through RISE with SAP or with S/4HANA, an experienced implementation partner can make all the difference in displaying value to circumspect finance departments.
SAP S/4HAHA migration : added value that only an elite partner can bring
To begin their journey, organisations must first create a business case, allocate funding, work with an SAP licence agreement, select the best implementation partner, implement the solution, and drive maximum adoption to ensure full value from the original business case. Whether enterprises are migrating from SAP ECC using Rise with SAP or upgrading to the latest version of S/4HANA, making accurate decisions at each step of the migration or upgrade process is key to success with the SAP business case.
Lumen helps organisations arrive at the right decision at the right moment while helping IT leaders retain their power of choice with Rise with SAP and S/4HANA migrations and upgrades. Organisations can deploy SAP on a public cloud, opt for a private cloud, or run it on-premises in the data centre. Furthermore, Lumen provides your organisation customisable commercial options and requirements for licensing, delivery, and operations.
We can partner with your organisation on its SAP transformation journey by performing discovery and advisory workshops to design future-state blueprints. Lumen can thereafter implement and maintain the solution with minimal challenges.
As an SAP platinum partner, Lumen brings to the table extensive experience and credentials including close partnership with various public cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. What’s more, we run our own private clouds and have strong cloud-centric capabilities which provide your organisation the power of choice. In short, Lumen is highly equipped with the expertise and resources to help your organisation achieve success in its SAP migration journey, whichever path you choose.
What’s next?
If you are ready for the Rise with SAP and S/4HANA journey, Lumen can help implement the ideal, customised solution for your organisation.
Lumen’s SAP practice brings over 20 years of experience and the Global Platinum Partner status to accelerate your business transformation with proven end-to-end solutions. As an elite partner, we provide:
- A consultative and customised approach
- Managed services: Our partnerships with AWS and other cloud providers help enhance infrastructure management, streamline SAP implementation, manage software support and AMS, as well as other technical managed services
- Core expertise in SAP deployment with highly experienced in-house SAP experts
- Complementary innovative solutions beyond SAP: Lumen also delivers other enterprise solutions such as networking, cloud, and security to provide you comprehensive technology options
Contact us today for a consultation with one of our SAP specialists to see how we can partner with you on your journey.
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