Maintenance phases for SAP ECC

What are the options?

As SAP ECC nears its end-of-life, there are three different maintenance phases available, depending on your version of SAP ECC (SAP ERP 6.0).

If you have a valid regular contract, you have access to the mainstream maintenance phase.

Once the regular lifecycle of product support ends (mainstream
maintenance) on 31 December 2025, you can upgrade or extend the
maintenance contract for an additional two years by paying a surplus.
However, this extended maintenance is subject to various technical
limitations.

Another option is the customer-specific maintenance. Support services in this option are extremely limited, although SAP will always search for and implement any relevant Notes in the SAP Support Portal.

If necessary, SAP will deep dive and develop a solution to a specific customer problem (at an additional cost).

The 3 maintenance phases:

Extended maintenance

Scope of support is usually similar to the scope during mainstream maintenance. However, technical limitations and/or other restrictions might require an upgrade to newer releases of SAP Business Suite 7
Applications
Enhancement packages
Add-ons
Further technical components
Limitations of delivery, maintenance and
support

Mainstream maintenance

Legal changes
Support packages
Problem resolution
Global support backbone
Mission critical support
Service level agreements**

* Currently offered for SAP Business Suite 7 core applications and related add-on products, from 2028 to 2030, at an additional fee of 2% on the maintenance base for all support ** As part of SAP Enterprise Support See SAP Release and Maintenance Strategy, SAP Notes 2881788 and 52505 and SAP Support Portal for more details. Third-party runtime databases not affected; treatment of third-party runtime databases after 2025 announced once coverage confirmed. Authorised use for SAP customers, partners, and prospects under NDA

Customer-specific maintenance

No delivery of legal changes
No delivery of new support packages
No guarantee for technological updates (e.g. no new kernel versions for new database or operating system versions)
No support of new interfaces
Customer-specific problem resolution for known problems only; may include a fee for solving new problems
No service level agreements**
No remote support to evaluate latest enhancement package based on a release in customer-specific maintenance**

What is the timeline for SAP ECC?

Let’s take an extensive look at the end dates for the SAP ECC (ERP 6.0) support, keeping in mind the different enhancement packs.

SAP ECC enhancement packs 1 to 5

SAP ECC enhancement packs 6 to 8

Enhancement packs 1 to 5 cannot be prolonged into extended maintenance after the mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC ends on 31 December 2025. As a customer with an enhancement pack 1 to 5, you have three options to choose from:

1. Migrate to SAP S/4HANA and benefit from the latest SAP technology

2. Upgrade to enhancement pack 6, 7 or 8 and opt for extended maintenance until 31 December 2027 as a temporary measure (cf. the options for customers with enhancement packs 6 to 8)

3. Go into customer specific maintenance, keeping in mind the risks mentioned above.

Enhancement packs 6 to 8 can be prolonged into extended maintenance after the mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC ends on 31 December 2025. This means that as a customer with an enhancement pack 6 to 8, you have three options to choose from:

1. Migrate to SAP S/4HANA and benefit from the latest SAP technology

2. Opt for extended maintenance until 31 December 2027 by paying the additional fee

3. Go into customer specific maintenance, keeping in mind the risks mentioned above

What is the timeline for SAP ECC?

What is SAP S/4HANA?

SAP ECC will be replaced by SAP S/4HANA, an intelligent, integrated ERP business suite that is built on the advanced in-memory platform, SAP HANA.

It is designed to help organisations run simple in a digital world by simplifying business processes, providing real-time insights, and enabling intelligent decision-making. By leveraging the power of the cloud, SAP S/4HANA enables organisations of all sizes to deploy and run the SAP ERP system faster and with fewer resources.

The result is a simple yet powerful ERP that opens the way to innovation.