Technical version change 2025

What only a few existing SAP customers know: By 2025, all SAP installations "must" be converted to the in-memory computing database Hana.

Why? Existing customers normally obtain their ERP licenses including one of the possible databases from SAP. Because ERP/ECC 6.0 and Business Suite 7 only require a runtime version of Oracle, IBM DB2 or MS SQL Server, SAP has concluded special contracts with the database providers in the past.

The system worked perfectly: sales were handled by SAP and existing customers paid a reduced license and service price. What had been a win-win-win situation for years (existing customers, SAP itself and the DB providers) has now been terminated by SAP!

In the initial Hana euphoria, SAP set a date of 2025 and terminated the database contracts with Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. Existing customers with an AnyDB (non-Hana database) will then find themselves in a legal vacuum.

Even if SAP now thinks better of it: the singularity of Hana is irrefutable! It seems almost impossible to reactivate the old database contracts. The fact is from 2025: SoH (SAP Business Suite 7 on Hana) or S/4 Hana.

You might still get support for the Business Suite until 2030, but with AnyDB, 2025 is the end of the fun. The SAP community still has five years for the database version change, which therefore only has to be a technical one for the time being, but will still tie up a lot of resources.

However, because SAP itself has not yet consolidated Hana versions 1 and 2 and the numerous support packages, existing customers face almost insurmountable obstacles on their DB roadmap.

A consolidated, certified and generally available Hana database is therefore the minimum requirement; in addition, clarity should also be created with regard to database licenses and maintenance for SAP and non-SAP applications.