89%

SAP Customers Plan to Run their Current Proven SAP ERP Releases 1

2025

Only 7 years until maintenance is expected to end for SAP ECC 62

$35M

$35M – average cost of S/4HANA migration and ongoing costs over 7 years3

SAP Customers Feel the Pressure to Make a Decision Now

Many SAP customers feel the pressure to adopt, or at least license S/4HANA now due to the planned end of support date for ECC 6 in 20252 and potential license audit threats. The vast majority of SAP customers – 89% from a recent survey1 – plan to run their stable and proven SAP ERP releases while waiting for S/4HANA to mature, for the cost and risk to decrease and an ROI to emerge. This has created a decision point for CIOs as they determine their SAP roadmap and strategy for the next decade and beyond.

Many SAP customers believe they have to choose NOW between two options:

Option 1: icon

Option 1:

"Rip and Replace" to SAP S/4HANA

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Option 2: icon

Option 2:

"Stay and Pay" with SAP

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Both options have their challenges and trade-offs, and SAP customers need to carefully assess the risks and benefits. Most SAP customers will choose to defer making a “Rip and Replace” to S/4HANA decision after evaluating its high cost, low maturity and hard to find ROI, but the high cost of maintenance and lack of innovation of “Stay and Pay” with SAP are real concerns as well.

Rimini Street enables customers that aren’t ready to make an S/4HANA decision today by helping defer the move until the product matures and the ROI is real. In the meantime, SAP customers can continue to run their stable and mature ECC platform beyond 2025 while enjoying premium support and investing significant savings to fund innovation and drive competitive advantage today.

A Risky and Financially Untenable "Rip and Replace" to SAP S/4HANA

The costs and risk of a "Rip and Replace" to SAP S/4HANA strategy now is too great for most SAP customers. S/4HANA is still an early-stage product today and lacks a business case for most customers.

S/4HANA is an Early-Stage Product Which Continues to Evolve

CIOs do not have a clear vision how S/4HANA fits their ERP strategy today

Cost

  • $35M – average cost of S/4HANA migration and ongoing costs over 7 years4
  • New S/4HANA licenses, support, hardware, databases and implementation required
  • Cost of rewriting customizations

Maturity

  • Over 400 million lines of code need to be rewritten by SAP5
  • Customers do not want to be "early adopters"6
  • Experts estimate it will be 4 to 6 years before product achieves functional parity with ECC 67

Business Case

  • Customers struggling to define a business case8
  • Only 3% of SAP customers live on S/4HANA today9
  • SAP customers believe that "Business Suite is still relevant" and will continue to use10

“We looked at S/4HANA, and concluded that it's not mature enough - almost no value, particularly compared to the cost to implement and support.”

CIO, Kitchenware Manufacturer and Distributor

Lost Opportunities with a "Stay and Pay" Strategy with SAP

Most customers don't recognize the likely costs and risks of the "Stay and Pay" SAP strategy including the high cost of maintenance, no support for 65% of issues, minimal investment in current applications and lack of innovation.

ECC 6 Roadmap Limits Your Ability to Evolve and Grow

CIOs not seeing commitment nor investments from SAP.

Expensive Maintenance

  • Annual maintenance price steadily increased from 17% to 22%11
  • Unnecessary updates and mandatory regression testing of SAP fixes
  • Total cost of maintenance = 2x your support fees every year5

Innovation Challenges

  • SAP invests 1% of support revenue in Enhancement Pack development12
  • 2 years since last Enhancement Pack 8 release in 2016
  • Activation of new business functions in Enhancement Packs in the single digit to low teens13

Lack of Service

  • Junior-level agents' lack expertise and customers need to escalate to reach a knowledgeable enginerring resource
  • 65% of issues not covered - ABAP customizations, Z-programs, integrations and performance tuning
  • Self-support requires reviewing and managing hundreds of irrelevant fixes costing time, money and resources

“We had a very large support contract that also included annual increases. It climbed up to over $350,000 annually, and we felt like we weren't getting anything out of the support - the upgrades and enhancement packs weren't meaningful to us, we certainly weren't getting any applicable new functionality. We were doing it just to stay on a supported version of the product.”

CIO, Superior Uniform Group

"Save and Innovate Now" with Rimini Street

Rimini Street supports SAP customers no matter which path they choose whether it’s continuing to run their stable and mature ECC applications or begin a re-implementation to S/4HANA. In fact we already support S/4HANA customers as well as ECC Business Suite customers, but we believe the majority of SAP customers will want to avoid the “Pay and Stay” with SAP and “Rip and Replace” to S/4HANA scenarios and chose to “Save and Innovate Now” with Rimini Street while keeping future roadmap options open.

In 10 to 15 years almost all SAP customers will be facing some “Rip and Replace” implementation. Who knows who the software winners will be then? SAP? Oracle? Microsoft? IBM? Salesforce? You will have many choices so why would you commit to an early-stage product like S/4HANA right now, when you could spend your precious IT funds on strategic projects that move the needle for your business today?

Join hundreds of SAP customers who are taking Rimini Street to the future, which may include S/4HANA or potentially an even better system for their unique needs.

Whether your ultimate destination is S/4HANA, an alternative modern application, or you haven’t settled on a future platform, Rimini Street is your smart path forward. Rimini Street supports customers running SAP on all major releases, including S/4HANA, as well as customers planning an eventual reimplementation onto S/4HANA in the future after a smooth transition back to SAP.

Benefits and Advantages of Taking the "Save and Innovate Now" Route

CIOs driving forward with innovation and not waiting on SAP.

Cost Savings

  • Avoid a financially untenable path to S/4HANA today
  • $35M – average cost of S/4HANA migration and ongoing costs over 7 years14
  • Reduce your ECC total maintenance costs up to 90%

Lower Risk

  • Avoid a forced decision on S/4HANA now until the product matures
  • Wait for the market to define the winners before choosing your next ERP platform
  • Seamlessly return to SAP for S/4HANA or other new applications

Premium Service

  • Support for custom code, interfaces and integrations included - not covered by SAP
  • Run ECC for a minimum of 15 years or as long as it meets business needs
  • Remove impact of 2025 end of support date for ECC 6

Faster Innovation

  • Drive top innovation projects today using best-in-class vendors and solutions.
  • Use your up to 90% total maintenance cost savings to fund innovation now
  • Avoid vendor lock-in to a solution with no business case

“We're now able to take on things like implementing Concur for travel and expense management, reviewing and implementing SAP's Warehouse Management at one of our sites, and customer-centric solutions like implementing Salesforce and integrating that to SAP. Certainly we wouldn't have been able to take on Salesforce without the savings - and we wouldn't have been able to do it with the resources we had under the old support methodology.”

Director of Global Applications, Goss International

Client Perspective

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“

We seriously evaluate every taxpayer dollar we spend; optimizing costs is of paramount importance. When I learned about Rimini Street, I was intrigued by the opportunity to get better support than we had with SAP and also streamline our costs. Looking back, I’d make the switch sooner if I could.”

– Bob Leek CIO
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“

The actual work to do the tax updates is easier than Oracle's PeopleSoft Update Manager (PUM) process. Our analysts now save 40-60 hours on each quarterly update.”

– Jon Cohen Manager, IT Enterprise Solutions
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Client Perspective
“

In the long run, this has allowed us to prioritise our technology investments to drive an easier and more engaging customer experience.”

– Michael Howard Chief Operating Officer
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3, 4, 14 Rimini Street S/4HANA Calculator (Validated by Vinnie Mirchandani, Author: SAP Nation, Leading Industry Analyst Inputs)
5 Rimini Street, Rimini Street’s ROI Calculator for SAP, assuming $1M current SAP annual maintenance fees

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