If you’re running SAP ECC, Business Suite or on‑premises S/4HANA, you’re not imagining the rising pressure. SAP’s own lifecycle policy brings mainstream maintenance for ECC and Business Suite products to an end between 2025 and 2027, with S/4HANA approaching similar deadlines shortly after — pushing many organizations toward the costly Customer‑Specific Maintenance program with reduced legal, tax and security updates if they don’t migrate. At the same time, SAP is routing the bulk of new innovation — including AI capabilities — exclusively into SAP Cloud ERP, further tightening the funnel toward subscription-based cloud models.
SAP presents a compelling vision with RISE and SAP Cloud ERP, but reaching SAP’s ideal future-state architecture requires customization removal, process rebuilding, integration redesign and a full reimplementation. What’s promoted as “agility” typically ends up being a multiyear, high-risk and high-cost undertaking that reduces flexibility and increases dependence on SAP for innovation. The subscription model compounds this by locking customers into SAP-controlled pricing, upgrade timing and innovation paths, driving higher long-term TCO while reducing control and exit options.
Add shrinking IT budgets, talent shortages and board demands for AI and innovation now — not three years from now — and it becomes clear why SAP’s standard guidance to just “migrate with RISE” feels out of touch with reality. CIOs today are navigating hybrid environments, intense vendor pressure and hard financial limits, making a forced cloud migration one of the least practical near‑term paths. It’s why many CIOs are asking the same question that’s likely on your mind: Is this really my only option?
A practical alternative: Third-party support and Agentic AI ERP
The shift in SAP’s support strategy creates real risk if you’re running ECC or S/4HANA. Falling into Customer-Specific Maintenance not only leaves you without legal and tax updates but also exposes your operations to compliance and security gaps. This is why third-party support has become an increasingly strategic option for CIOs.
According to a study by Freeform Dynamics, 79% of SAP customers value third-party support specifically for the freedom to avoid forced migrations and move on their own terms.
With third-party support, you can maintain full support for ECC and on-premises and cloud-based S/4HANA, including support for custom code, integrations, global regulatory updates, and performance fixes, while significantly reducing total support costs. Many CIOs redirect those savings directly into modernization initiatives. More importantly, this approach buys you something SAP’s roadmap doesn’t provide – more time, stability and optionality to modernize on your terms.
Agentic AI ERP is emerging as a credible and pragmatic path forward for CIOs under pressure to innovate now. Instead of following RISE guidance of sunsetting a functioning system built for your business needs and rebuilding your extensions on SAP BTP, you can stabilize your existing system and layer intelligence over the top. With the Agentic AI ERP model, autonomous agents sit in an orchestration layer to coordinate cross-system processes, improve UX and automate workflows — all through APIs and modular services.
The advantage is immediate: You gain the agility that SAP’s vision promises, but without the cost, disruption or forced subscription model tied to SAP Cloud ERP. This lets you deploy meaningful AI capabilities and automation in weeks, not years, while keeping mission-critical operations stable. For a growing number of CIOs, the solution isn’t replacing the core — it’s innovating around it.
Recent research demonstrates both the appeal and efficacy of the Agentic AI ERP model:
- In an IDC survey, 72.5% of respondents stated that they’ve adopted a composable applications strategy for greater flexibility and control.
- An MIT Technology Review Insights Executive Brief highlights how enterprises can “maintain a stable platform while experimenting with new capabilities.”
- Constellation Research noted that early adopters of Agentic AI ERP are seeing up to 60% productivity gains and a 50% reduction in process time and effort.
A modernization path designed for CIO reality
A consistent modernization pattern is emerging among CIOs — one that reflects how enterprise architecture is shifting and what actually delivers value today. Though the language differs from company to company, the winning strategy consistently follows three moves:
1. Support and stabilize the SAP core.
Organizations are extending the life of ECC and on‑prem and cloud S/4HANA releases by keeping them fully supported, compliant and cost‑efficient — often through third‑party support that eliminates deadline pressure and maintains customizations. Along with creating a stable core “System of Record” that can remain viable well beyond 2040, this frees teams from reactive maintenance cycles.
2. Optimize the SAP environment for security, performance and connectivity.
Instead of reimplementing, CIOs are improving their existing SAP systems by hardening infrastructure, simplifying integrations and strengthening security to ensure the landscape is stable, efficient and ready for future innovation.
3. Innovate around the core with Agentic AI and modular architectures.
With the foundation stable and optimized, organizations layer intelligence on top of their SAP — automating processes, delivering modern user experiences and building a flexible ecosystem of APIs, cloud-native services and AI capabilities without touching the core.
This approach — one streamlined through the Rimini Smart Path™ — gives you a predictable way to accelerate transformation without pausing innovation or draining resources for a massive RISE migration with unclear ROI and benefits.
You don’t have to choose disruption to achieve innovation
Organizations like Kingfisher have already proven that staying on SAP ECC with third-party support while modernizing around the core can deliver faster, more measurable results than a full move to SAP Cloud ERP.[1]
And the retailer isn’t alone.
Ypê is another standout example — a company that pushed ahead with Agentic AI-driven ERP modernization while still running its existing S/4HANA release, powered by Rimini Support™. The company didn’t wait for a multiyear reimplementation; instead, it built new digital capabilities, automated workflows, modernized the user experience and delivered business outcomes at speed — all without surrendering control of its roadmap.
Across industries, CIOs are choosing stability and autonomy over vendor‑defined transformation paths — and using the savings to fund the innovation their business expects.
Key takeaways
SAP may say otherwise, but the truth is that you don’t need to undergo a lengthy RISE migration to modernize. Instead, you can stabilize the existing ECC or S/4HANA release that works, optimize for improvement and innovate where it matters — all while keeping control of your architecture, your pace and your budget. This is the smart alternative that CIOs are choosing today, and you can too.
[1] Lindsay Clark, “Retail giant Kingfisher rejects SAP ERP upgrade plan,” The Register, retrieved 6 February 2026 from CISA Announcement
