Assessing Your SAP Roadmap Options

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:

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.

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.

^{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