2025 - postponed and lifted

There will be a further two years of standard maintenance and paid and extended maintenance for 2028 to 2030.

Existing customers who do not opt for extended maintenance by the end of 2027 but continue to use their Business Suite 7 will automatically be switched to Customer Specific Maintenance.

This includes the solution of already known problems with unchanged fees. The business press rejoiced at the supposedly good news - SAP listens to its customers, right?

Upset: Alarmingly, there is not a word about AnyDB and the Abap and Java app servers from NetWeaver in SAP's statement. But without a database and NetWeaver stack, there will be no ERP/ECC 6.0 by 2030 - and no Business Suite on Hana, SoH.

Existing SAP customers can find the all-clear and a roadmap in Service Note 1648480 Version 21 from February 4 of this year: NetWeaver versions 7.0 EhP 3, 7.3 EhP 1, 7.4 and 7.5 will provide the Abap stack until 2030. Anyone who also uses the Java stack must migrate to NetWeaver version 7.5.

Oracle, IBM and Microsoft: SAP Note 2881788 states: "Runtime licenses for third-party Databases are not affected by this new maintenance strategy of Business Suite 7.

Treatment of third-party runtime databases after 2025 will be announced once coverage from these vendors is confirmed." An SAP spokesperson told E-3 Magazine: "Regarding the contractual relationships with our database vendors, I can assure you that these have not been terminated and SAP has ongoing contracts with all three vendors.

As is usual in the industry, such contracts have a fixed term that varies depending on the provider and ends at different times. As in previous years, SAP will continue to talk to the providers in good time.

Alternatively, customers are free to migrate their databases to Hana today or to opt for a direct license from the provider."

The final question remains: who is going to pay for all this? SAP must now deliver database licenses to Oracle, IBM and Microsoft for at least five more years.

At the same time, the support and maintenance structures for hundreds of system configurations must be continued. S/4 simplification with just one operating system (Linux) and just one database (Hana) is probably not going to happen by 2030, is it?

Why the SAP share price did not immediately plummet can only be explained by the technical incomprehension of the business press and financial analysts!