SAP Business Suite 7 — the umbrella over ECC 6.0 — exits mainstream maintenance at the end of 2027, with extended maintenance running through 2030 at premium pricing. SAP positions the cliff as a one-way migration to S/4HANA or RISE. In practice there are four credible exits: migrate to S/4HANA on-premises, migrate to RISE, take SAP extended maintenance, or move to third-party support. Each exit has a defensible economic envelope. In 340+ engagements, the decision that minimised five-year TCO was case-specific in every direction — and rarely the SAP-default path.
SAP's published dates: mainstream maintenance for SAP Business Suite 7 core applications ends 31 December 2027. SAP Extended Maintenance is then available through 31 December 2030 at a 2 percentage-point uplift on existing maintenance, equivalent to roughly a 10% absolute increase on the base maintenance line. After 2030, SAP's Customer-Specific Maintenance applies, which is best understood as a security-and-regulatory-only baseline at a further premium.
The framing matters. For most SAP ECC customers, the maintenance line is meaningful — 22% of the historic licence list per year is typical. A 10% uplift on that line for three years (2028–2030) is a material additional cost. The decision to incur it, defer it, or eliminate it sits with the customer, not with SAP.
The four exits each have a 5-year TCO envelope. We model all four against your specific footprint.
CVA-3 conversion plus deployment on customer or hyperscaler-direct infrastructure. Keeps licence ownership; keeps Oracle DB / IBM Power optionality where running. Highest project cost in years 1–2, lowest steady-state TCO in years 3–5 for organisations with strong internal SAP teams.
Subscription bundle covering S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition plus hyperscaler infrastructure plus base support. Predictable subscription cost. SAP-managed infrastructure layer reduces internal Basis burden. Highest steady-state cost, lowest internal effort.
No migration. Pay the 2 percentage-point uplift. Buy time. Valid play for organisations with material competing transformation programmes, divestiture programmes that reduce ECC scope, or stable estates that do not require new SAP functionality. Negotiate the uplift cap and the migration-credit treatment now.
Rimini Street, Spinnaker Support, or similar providers offer SAP-equivalent support at typical discounts of 50–62% versus SAP's maintenance line. Triggers a one-way contract event: SAP withdraws future-version rights against the dropped maintenance, but already-acquired entitlement survives. Strong fit for stable, optimised ECC estates with no near-term S/4HANA conviction.
Includes the 5-year TCO model for the four ECC exits and the migration-timing decision framework.
SAP's account team will frame the 2027 deadline as a forcing function for an S/4HANA decision. In commercial reality, the deadline is a leverage point for the customer — because SAP's S/4HANA / RISE quota attainment depends on conversions landing before the cliff. Quarter-by-quarter, year-by-year, SAP's account team has substantial flexibility on conversion economics during this window. The customer that approaches the conversion with a credible third-party-support alternative quoted and an extended-maintenance fallback priced consistently extracts 15–28% better conversion terms.
The optimal path is rarely SAP's default. We benchmark all four against your specific 5-year envelope.
We have modelled migration vs extended-maintenance vs third-party-support across estates from $1M to $25M in maintenance.
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