SAP customers are at a crossroads: innovate now or take a leap of faith on S/4HANA.

The end of mainstream maintenance for SAP’s ECC6 ERP suite is scheduled for 2027*. And while SAP is apparently trying to transition its entire client base to the new S/4HANA platform, many customers won’t be pressured to move just because SAP says it’s time.

A new IDG global survey reports that 85% of SAP customers surveyed plan to continue running existing SAP applications until 2025 or beyond, despite the impending cutoff date for mainstream maintenance support for ECC6. The survey also reports that although these SAP customers are happy with their current ERP environments, they are also concerned with stagnation, as few innovations and enhancements are being delivered for those systems by SAP.

So how can SAP customers innovate, compete, and avoid stagnation without migrating to S/4HANA right now? IDG’s new Market Pulse report, “Navigating the Future of ERP” analyzes this question and details its global survey findings.

*On February 4, 2020, SAP had announced mainstream support for SAP Business Suite 7 until 2027.