SAP S/4 Private Edition 2033

S/4 conversion 2033 in the VIP environment

In German, the saying goes that names are just smoke and mirrors. A name says little about the true nature of things. Is this truly the case? In the case of SAP, the name "SAP ERP Private Edition Transition Option" seems to reveal more than the ERP world market leader would like.

Officially, the Private Edition S/4 conversion is only available to select SAP customers. This makes it a "Very Important Person S/4" (VIP-S/4), or as SAP calls it, ERP Private Edition. The VIP status of this S/4 conversion will not last long, as SAP is endeavoring to transform all customers to S/4 Hana. SAP is famous for its exceptions to contracts and licenses, and quantity comes before quality.

It is unclear why SAP customers should have the option to migrate from ECC 6.0 to S/4. This is probably an attempt to create a sense of exclusivity to increase pressure on SAP customers. Ultimately, SAP is offering a fair deal to every customer, and it's up to them to take advantage of it. However, the SAP community should not consider 2033 irrevocable because the program can technically be extended.

Hana, S/4, RISE, Business Suite and ERP Private Edition

SAP ECC/ERP 6.0 and the SAP Business Suite 7 have many successors. SAP customers' hesitancy should come as no surprise: it's difficult to recognize and orchestrate SAP's ERP offerings, software, concepts, exceptions, renames, relaunches, and innovations. For months, there was a debate on RISE and GROW about which S/4 program was suitable, adequate, and logical for which target group.

Business Suite becomes Business Suite

Because S/4 Hana obviously did not have the right end-to-end processes, SAP initiated a relaunch of the Business Suite to make the transition to the new ERP era more palatable for SAP customers. The result is that the redundancy of S/4, Business Suite, and ERP is currently unmanageable. There is a proliferation of terms and ERP vocabularies at SAP.

According to SAP, many customers are transitioning to S/4 Cloud, Private Edition, and S/4 Cloud, Public Edition, as part of the RISE initiative. SAP acknowledges that the largest and most complex ERP installations may not be able to complete this transition by the end of the extended maintenance phase for SAP Business Suite 7 in 2030.

From suite to suite via SAP S/4 Private Edition

The SAP offering includes an ERP cloud subscription for specific products, with a focus on ERP Central Component (ECC 6.0) and SAP Hana. This offering is complemented by services that facilitate the transition to RISE via the Max Success plan, which will not be generally available until January 2026. The Private Edition is an S/4 transition to a RISE transition to an ERP transition.

SAP aims to help customers focus on setting up, transforming, and optimizing their new and future ERP system landscape. Business Continuity ERP services include components such as legal changes, security patches, and bug fixes. SAP Note 3591251 lists the details of which products are eligible.

Transformation conditions for ERP to ERP

In order to take advantage of the SAP ERP Private Edition transition option, prerequisites must be met to use the private conversion offer. Conversion to the ERP Private Edition must be completed by December 31, 2030. This requires a migration to Hana. SAP strongly recommends completing this migration now to start preparing the systems for the additional requirements listed below.

According to SAP specifications, ECC 6.0 systems undergoing transformation should have a system size of at least 2 TB. It is unclear whether this value applies before or after data consolidation and cleansing. This suggests that the value is largely theoretical.

Of course, SAP also wants to earn money from the private S/4 conversion. The transition option (ERP Private Edition) is only available with the fee-based Max Success plan for the period from 2031 to 2033. SAP will also provide transformation services in this case. The Success plan will be available to everyone in January 2026.

To support customers, SAP introduced the ERP Private Edition Transition Option. This time-limited subscription offer is designed to ensure business continuity from 2031 to 2033 while enabling a structured path to Cloud ERP or Cloud ERP Private.

In short, it is still difficult to assess what this means in detail for every customer, according to the people responsible at IG SAP CH (SAP Switzerland interest group). This private transition option will be particularly relevant for those operating complex ERP landscapes who know that switching to S/4 by 2030 is not feasible. The IG-SAP-CH meeting on November 20, 2025, at Google in Zurich will offer an exciting discussion on this topic—a good opportunity to ask questions and read between the lines.

SAP is using a rhetorical trick to extend the S/4 transformation until 2033—under certain circumstances. This is a risky endeavor for the SAP community because it's unclear why this extension can't continue until 2035 or 2040 based on SAP's current offerings. Thank you, SAP, for this friendly concession. However, it simultaneously reveals SAP's lack of planning. Following ECC/ERP 6.0 comes SAP ERP Private Edition, not 7.0, with a transition option until 2033. This private ERP is merely a distraction from S/4 Hana, which will fail to convert many SAP customers by 2027 or 2030.

Further opportunities for discussion with the author will be available at the PAC analysts' meeting in Munich on October 14: you can register here. Another opportunity will be on October 30 at Motorworld Munich with SAP partner Empirius: you can register here.