SAP S/4 HANA

SAP support of SAP ERP 6.0 – also know as SAP ECC – will end in 2025 (for enhancement package EHP 5 and below) respectively in 2027 (for enhancement package EHP 6 and above) with optional extended support until 2030.

It’s time to start planning your switch to SAP S/4 HANA.

Find out which SAP version you have with our guide.

A functioning SAP system has 3 layers: a database layer, an application layer and a presentation layer. The S/4 HANA conversion will affect all three.

DATABASE:

SAP ERP 6.0 had various database options (like: Oracle, IBM DB2, Sybase ASE). As of S/4 HANA only the HANA database is available.

Several customers prefer to split up the S/4 HANA conversion to smaller projects, starting with the technical migration from their previous database to the HANA database (including APC check). This can be done early, with only IT involvement, as the business will not notice any change.

HOSTING:

An S/4 HANA conversion is the perfect opportunity to re-consider your server strategy. Instead of on-premise solutions more and more clients choose private cloud hosting either at SAP or at Amazon Web Services (AWS) / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud Platform (GPC) so that they don’t need to maintain the servers themselves anymore.

APPLICATION:

There are several business function changes affecting a range of modules:

several legacy database tables are replaced by new S/4 database tables. This can affect your custom developments and interfaces
changes in the ABAP syntax
use of Business Partner instead of the previously separated Customer and Vendor master data
Universal Journal handles both FI GL accounts and cost elements
retirement of some GUI transactions to be replaced with FIORI

USER EXPERIENCE:

Most of the transactions can be used further in S/4 HANA (on premise / private cloud) as well. However the new release offers several SAP applications for an enhanced browser-based user experience.