SAP Extends support for Business Suite 7 to 2027 and beyond … but the devil is always in the detail

The SAP world has been all abuzz since SAP’s announcement on February 4, 2020 about their extension of support for Business Suite 7 (BS7) which many people know as ECC 6.0 and/or related components. According to the press release[i], customers with existing maintenance contracts will be able to continue using and getting support for BS7 through the end of 2027 and will be able to purchase extended maintenance support through the end of 2030 for an additional 2 points over their current contracts.

It is clear that SAP blinked first although, in an interview[ii], SAP positions this as a “proactive step”, not as a reaction to customer pushback. Many tweets and articles have already come out talking about how customers now have breathing room and have clarity on support for BS7. And if I just jumped on the bandwagon here, those of you who have been reading my blog for years would be sorely disappointed.

And now for the rest of the story

Most of you are aware that BS7 is the application suite which can use one of several 3^rd party database options. Historically, the most popular database platform for medium to large customers was Oracle DB, followed by IBM Db2. BS7 can also run on HANA and in that context is considered Suite on HANA (SoH).

What was not mentioned in this latest announcement is the support for the underlying databases. For this, one must access the respective SAP Notes for Oracle[iii] and Db2[iv].

This may come as a surprise to some, but if you are running Oracle 12.2.0.1, you only have until November of this year to move to Oracle 19c (or Oracle 18c, but that would seem pretty pointless as its support ends in June of 2021.) But it gets much more fun as that is only supported under normal maintenance until March, 2023 and under extended support until March, 2026. In theory, there might be another version or dot release supported beyond this time, but that is not detailed in any SAP Note. In the best-case scenario, Oracle 12 customers will have to upgrade to 19c and then later to an, as yet unannounced, later version which may be more transition than many customers are willing to accept.

Likewise, for Db2 customers, 10.5, 11.1 and 11.5 are all supported through December, 2025. The good news is that no upgrades are required through the end of 2025.

For both, however, what happens if later versions of either DB are not announced as being supported by SAP. Presumably, this means that a heterogeneous migration to Suite on HANA would be required. In other words, unless SAP provides clarity on the DB support picture, customers using either Oracle DB or IBM Db2 may be faced with an expensive, time consuming and disruptive upgrade to SoH near the end of 2025. Most customers have expressed that they are unwilling to do back to back migrations, so if they are required to migrate to SoH in 2025 and then migrate to S/4HANA in 2027, that is simply too close for comfort.

Lacking any further clarification from SAP, it still seems as if it would be best to complete your conversion to S/4HANA by the end of 2025. Alternately, you may want to ask SAP for a commitment to support your current and/or planned DB for BS7 through the end of 2027, see how they respond and how much they will charge.

SAPonPower

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