SAP couldn't persuade customers to move. So it set a date.
SAP ends ECC mainstream support in December 2027, with paid maintenance through December 2030. Cloud revenue rose 25% to €17.14 billion in 2024. Yet only about 14,000 of 35,000 ECC customers had migrated.
Transcript
If your customers will not move, a better product may not move them. A date might. SAP is the case.
SAP needed its customers to leave its old ERP software, ECC. It could keep selling the cloud on its merits. Or it could remove the option to stand still. It chose the date: mainstream support ends in December 2027, and paid maintenance runs through December 2030. After 2030, no security patches.
In fiscal 2024, SAP's cloud revenue rose 25% to €17.14 billion. Software license revenue fell 21% to €1.40 billion.
But a deadline is not a migration. At the end of 2024, Gartner counted only about 14,000 of SAP's 35,000 ECC customers on the new system, and projected roughly 17,000 holdouts by 2027.
SAP had set and moved its deadlines before, in 2017, 2019 and 2025. Customers had learned that waiting could pay.
If you set a deadline to force a change, make it one you will keep, and plan for the customers who still will not move.
The records behind this video
Every figure in the video comes from this Decision Record, each with its sources.
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