Modernize strategically with third-party support for S/4HANA
After making the move to S/4HANA, SAP customers were shocked to learn that AI and other capabilities would only be available in the cloud. And whereas public cloud requires a “Clean Core” without business-critical customizations, private cloud introduces escalating and unpredictable cost subscription costs over time — a concern among 90% of SAP customers.
Now, as end-of-support dates for select S/4HANA releases and key SAP products arrive, SAP customers are pressured to pay more for extended support or migrate to SAP Cloud ERP (formerly SAP S/4HANA Cloud) and accept the constraints of SAP’s roadmap. But there’s a better path forward.
With Rimini Street’s proven, end-to-end services and support for S/4HANA, you can retain full support for your SAP S/4HANA release through 2040 and beyond — avoiding costly migrations, optimizing for greater system stability and gaining the freedom to modernize on your own terms. Better yet, with Rimini Street’s Agentic UX solutions, you can achieve Agentic AI innovation now — instead of years from now — delivering true Transformation without Disruption™ with your existing systems.
Thousands of Rimini Street clients have already freed themselves from vendor lock-in and Clean Core mandates while cutting annual SAP Support costs by up to 50%. Those organizations are self-funding rapid innovation without downtime, complexity or compromise using additional savings from avoided migrations.
Now it’s your turn. Stay in control, maximize the potential of your existing S/4HANA, and deliver Agentic AI capabilities to your organization in weeks — all while benefiting from award-winning support for SAP that includes regulatory updates, industry-leading SLAs and a dedicated Primary Support Engineer (PSE) with 20+ years of deep ERP experience.
Say NO to risky migration
Maximize S/4HANA life
Fund innovation in budget
Calculate your savings potential
Compare current SAP S/4HANA support costs to our efficient model. See how much you could save by avoiding a RISE migration and learn how your existing S/4HANA release can fuel innovation and long‑term value.
Plotting Your Course to Future Success with SAP
According to research from Freeform Dynamics, 78% of survey respondents are innovating with multiple vendors, not just relying on SAP. Learn how others are building a roadmap that moves business forward — and how you can do the same.
A quicker path to Agentic AI ERP
The AI race is on, and your business needs to move fast. Discover how you can drive competitive advantage, productivity and profitability with the Rimini Smart Path™ — a proven methodology that delivers real innovation within your existing systems and budget.
Maximize the value of your S/4HANA investment
Extend the life of your SAP S/4HANA system and accelerate innovation without costly migrations or vendor lock-in. As a global leader of end-to-end third-party enterprise software support, managed services and Agentic AI ERP innovation solutions, Rimini Street serves as a strategic IT partner for organizations like yours. Let us help you reduce costs, future-proof your IT and achieve growth on your terms.
Leverage AI-elevated process solutions to streamline workflows, unify data and enable Agentic AI ERP across your enterprise quickly — without disruptive upgrades or migrations.
With Rimini Agentic UX, you benefit from:
- Modern persona-based experiences for enhanced productivity
- Rapid deployment into your S/4HANA on-prem environment in weeks
- Prebuilt workflows for maintenance operations, finance, compliance and more
Get comprehensive support for SAP S/4HANA , including tax, legal and regulatory updates. We help maximize uptime and resolve critical issues fast, reducing annual SAP S/4HANA support costs by up to 50% to self-fund innovation.
With Rimini Support for S/4HANA, you gain:
- Dedicated, named PSE with 20+ years of experience, backed by hundreds of SAP experts
- Support for custom code and strategic advisory
- 10-minute response SLA for critical issues and 4-hour resolution SLA for P1 cases
Let Rimini Street handle day-to-day S/4HANA management to help reduce complexity and improve operational efficiency. Our always-on global network of in-house engineers addresses service requests, incidents and more.
With Rimini Manage for S/4HANA, you gain:
- Ability to fill skills gaps and free up your IT team for innovation
- Root cause analysis to help prevent incident recurrence and improve stability
- Unlimited ticket and flex models that keep costs transparent and predictable
Overcome your IT challenges and get your transformation projects off the ground with professional services from our experts. From software licensing to SAP roadmap options, we can provide the guidance you need.
With Rimini Consult for S/4HANA, you gain:
- Vendor-agnostic IT roadmapping and strategy based on your business goals
- Personalized solutions to help maximize performance, security and interoperability
- Project design and implementation to achieve desired functionality
Adopt a proactive approach to protecting your S/4HANA release for greater peace of mind. Help reduce your risk exposure and strengthen your overall security posture without the need for expensive, disruptive upgrades.
With Rimini Protect for S/4HANA, you gain:
- Industry-leading SLAs for security cases, including 10-minute guaranteed response for P1 issues
- Zero-day advisories with mitigation strategies and guidance
- Cost-effective solutions that free up budget for innovation
Prolong the life of your S/4HANA release by enabling seamless compatibility with future technologies. Use our patented and exclusive interoperability solutions to decouple your enterprise software from your technology stack for greater freedom.
With Rimini Connect for S/4HANA, you gain:
- Fast, easy implementation without uptime impact
- Ability to integrate new browsers, email, Java and OS without upgrades
- Expert roadmapping services to help plan for technology changes
Maintain business continuity and improve software performance by mitigating issues and preventing critical impact to the business. Count on our team to provide proactive monitoring and health checks to keep your S/4HANA running smoothly.
With Rimini Watch for S/4HANA, you gain:
- Expert technical support and guidance on best practices
- Web-based dashboard with alerts and diagnostic metrics for visibility
- Greater system stability to allow for innovation
Streamline and automate SAP change management. Leverage a future-ready platform designed to accelerate change delivery, simplify change management and reduce operational risk.
With Rimini Change, you gain:
- Fast deployment, with implementation completed in just 2–3 weeks
- Modern, intuitive, user-friendly web interface
- Straightforward auditing through documentation, traceability and detailed logging
Street Talk: Let’s get real about SAP
SAP’s roadmap is changing quickly, creating new uncertainty. Street Talk offers candid insight from seasoned experts on what’s ahead. Stay informed on shifting timelines, RISE migration pressure and growing costs, and explore a smarter path with Agentic AI ERP.
Hear what our clients have to say
With Rimini Street, our SAP and VMware environments simply work. That reliability gives us time to improve business processes and collaborate more closely with our innovation teams. We’ve found a partner we trust to keep our core systems running while we focus on where the business needs to go next.”
With Rimini Street, we have confidence that our SAP systems are in expert hands. That trust allows our team to focus on enabling the business rather than worrying about ERP support.”
With Rimini Street, the scope of support covers our customizations and add-ons. We have experienced faster time to solution and no hesitation resolving issues with our customized environment.”
With SAP, it could take up to four hours to get a ticket response. With Rimini Street, if we have a P1 critical issue, they respond within 10 minutes. And Rimini Street covers our customizations that we used to have to pay for additional professional services to support.”
The central applications run as expected, which provides peace of mind and allows the IT organization to focus on higher-value strategic objectives.”
Rimini Street adapts to what we want to do. It is truly an extension of my internal SAP support team. ”
Don’t miss these critical SAP deadlines
No matter which SAP products or versions you run — or when SAP support expires — Rimini Street can support you now and extend the life of your systems through 2040 and beyond.
Product |
Version/Release |
End of Mainstream
|
|---|---|---|
SAP ECC and Business Suite |
||
SAP ERP (ECC 6.0) |
EHP 0-5 (Enh. Pk 0-5) |
12/31/2025 |
SAP ERP (ECC 6.0) |
EHP 6-8 (Enh. Pk 6-8) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP CRM (Customer Rel' Mgmt) |
7.0 (Business Suite 7) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP SCM (Customer Rel' Mgmt) |
7.0 (Business Suite 7) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP SRM (Customer Rel' Mgmt) |
7.0 (Business Suite 7) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP NetWeaver Platform |
7.5 |
12/31/2027 |
SAP S/4HANA |
||
SAP S/4HANA |
Finance Add-on 1503/1605 |
12/31/2025 |
SAP S/4HANA |
2020 |
12/31/2025 |
SAP S/4HANA |
2021 |
12/31/2026 |
SAP S/4HANA |
2022 |
12/31/2027 |
SAP S/4HANA |
2023 |
12/31/2030 |
Other |
||
SAP BusinessObjects BI |
4.3 (BI Platform) |
12/31/2026 |
SAP BusinessObjects BI |
2025 (new release) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP Business Warehouse |
7.5 (NetWeaver BW) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP BW/4HANA |
1.0/2.0 (initial releases) |
12/31/2025 |
SAP BW/4HANA |
2021 (latest release) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP BPC (Plan & Consolidation) |
10.1 (Microsoft Platform) |
6/30/2026 |
SAP BPC |
10.1 (NetWeaver Platform) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP BPC |
11.1 (for SAP BW/4HANA 2.0) |
12/31/2025 |
SAP BPC |
2021 (for SAP BW/4HANA 2021) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP Global Trade Services |
11 |
12/31/2025 |
SAP Solution Manager |
7.2 (current version) |
12/31/2027 |
SAP Commerce |
(Hybris) On-premise 2205 |
7/31/2026 |
SAP HANA (Database) |
2.0 SPS05 (Long-term Support) |
12/31/2025 |
SAP HANA (Database) |
2.0 SPS07 (latest LTS) |
4/30/2028 |
FAQs
When does mainstream maintenance end for S/4HANA?
The end-of-support date for S/4HANA depends on the version you’re running. For versions 1511 through 1909, mainstream maintenance has already ended. For version 2020, mainstream maintenance ended on December 31, 2025. For version 2021, it ends on December 31, 2026. For version 2022, it ends on December 31, 2027. For version 2023, SAP has extended the life to a seven-year cycle, so its mainstream maintenance ends in 2030. Watch our vodcast entitled “SAP ECC 6 Support End Date: 2025 or 2027?” for more details.
How can I get ongoing support for SAP S/4HANA past the end-of-mainstream-maintenance dates?
To ensure ongoing support for your S/4HANA system, you can adopt third-party support for your S/4HANA version from a trusted provider such as Rimini Street. Learn more about your options for support for S/4HANA past the end-of-support dates.
What is included in Rimini Street’s services and support for SAP S/4HANA?
With Rimini Support for SAP S/4HANA, you’ll get:
- A dedicated Primary Support Engineer (PSE): We assign a dedicated PSE — from a team averaging 20 years of experience and covering eight languages — who is available in your time zone and stays familiar with your account for faster, more comprehensive support.
- A global, follow-the-sun support model: With more than 1,100 FTE engineers and experts available 24/7/365 located across the globe to support 150+ countries and territories, we ensure your case is looked after with the freshest set of eyes until resolution.
- Industry-leading, guaranteed SLAs: When you put in a priority ticket, you’re guaranteed to receive a call back in less than 10 minutes. On average, our response time for P1 and P2 cases is less than 2 minutes, resulting in faster time to resolution and greater peace of mind for our clients. Rimini Street also offers a guaranteed 4-hour resolution SLA for P1 cases.
- Global tax, legal and regulatory (TLR) services: Our global TLR services provide proprietary, patent-pending technology scoping from >5,300 government sites, 3,500 sources and 26,000 jurisdictions, ensuring that your applications stay up to date and compliant.
- Break/fix and customization support: We cover integral, mission-critical customizations as if they were part of the standard, delivered product at no additional charge.
- A dedicated account manager and onboarding and archiving services: You’ll have a dedicated, highly experienced account manager right by your side to understand your strategic goals and provide guidance on how to achieve them. Additionally, we provide an ISO 9001:2015-certified archiving process that facilitates a safe and rightful transfer of a client’s entitlements from SAP, which preserves your flexibility to adopt new platforms and releases in the future.
Learn more about what you can expect from Rimini Street support and services.
Is it necessary to migrate to SAP Cloud ERP with RISE?
No, it is not necessary to migrate to SAP Cloud ERP with RISE, despite what SAP says. Rimini Street can extend the life of your existing on-premises S/4HANA version by providing ongoing support from expert engineers. Rimini Street will continue to support your version of S/4HANA for at least 15 more years.
But if I don’t migrate to SAP Cloud ERP, won’t I miss out on AI features?
With Rimini Agentic UX™ Solutions, you don’t have to migrate to SAP Cloud ERP or get locked into RISE just to get access to AI features. Rimini Agentic UX is an intelligent, AI-driven user engagement layer deployed over the top of existing ERP systems and releases, enabling a modern persona-based experience and automating workflows that leverage AI agents. It allows you to keep your existing on-premises S/4HANA system running, and you’ll get all the benefits of AI in your S/4HANA system without having to migrate to SAP Cloud ERP. Learn more about Rimini Agentic UX.
How does Rimini Protect™ keep my SAP S/4HANA system secure without relying on SAP-delivered patches?
Upon leaving SAP S/4HANA Support, clients no longer receive new updates, including security patches. Even those on Customer-Specific Maintenance for certain releases don’t receive new security updates or patches. But with Rimini Protect™, you can keep your SAP S/4HANA system secure without relying on SAP-delivered patches by shifting from a reactive, vendor-dependent model to a proactive, preventive security approach.
Instead of waiting for SAP updates, Rimini Protect™ provides virtual patching, continuous monitoring and threat anticipation to protect your environment from known and unknown vulnerabilities. This includes dedicated security services that analyze threat‑intelligence sources, apply preventive security controls and minimize vulnerabilities and compliance risks — all without modifying SAP code or depending on SAP’s patch cycle. Learn more about Rimini Protect security services and solutions.
Additional resources
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 […]
CIOs are no strangers to ambiguity, as constant technology shifts, evolving board expectations and unrelenting pressure to modernize are all part of the job. But few developments have triggered more confusion than SAP S/4HANA 2602 — the February 2026 update delivered exclusively to SAP Cloud ERP Public customers. What’s fueling the uncertainty isn’t the release […]
This blog was originally published in December 2024 and updated in February 2026. For SAP ECC and S/4HANA on-premises customers, SAP’s push for RISE with SAP has only intensified in 2026 as the company seeks to convert billions in maintenance revenue into subscription-based cloud contracts. While this strategy may benefit SAP’s shareholders and financials, CIOs […]
This blog was originally published in February 2023 and was updated in August 2025 The end of mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC 6 and Business Suite 7 is coming soon. Organizations are being pressured by SAP to migrate to S/4HANA, while many are considering sticking with ECC 6, as noted by several SAP analysts. Allow […]
Ready to maximize your S/4HANA’s potential?
Contact Rimini Street to learn how you can avoid costly migrations and vendor lock-in, extend support for SAP S/4HANA on-prem beyond 2040 and accelerate innovation within your existing budget.