The Discontinuation of SAP S/4

RISE and GROW with Business Suite

SAP CEO Christian Klein began his speech at the 2025 Annual General Meeting dynamically and conciliatorily. He made a shocking announcement when he reinterpreted RISE and GROW. Until the SAP Annual General Meeting, the two SAP programs were known as the S/4 roadmap to the private or public cloud. RISE and GROW with SAP was the roadmap for a successful S/4 conversion.

However, Christian Klein never mentioned the product "S/4 Hana" during his presentation at the Annual General Meeting! Without further explanation, Klein reinterpreted RISE and GROW as a roadmap for the new Business Suite: RISE for SAP customers and GROW for new ones.

S/4 is a dead end

Christian Klein's words can only be interpreted to mean that "S/4" is a taboo term—a product that has fallen out of favor. The announced maintenance extension, "SAP ERP, Private Edition, Transition Option," makes a good deal of sense, but we can only speculate about the reasons.

Even after ten years, S/4 has been unable to establish itself in the ERP market. When SAP Chief Sales Officer Scott Russell unexpectedly left the global ERP market leader last year, it was clear to all that S/4 would not be a worthy successor to ERP/ECC 6.0 (SAP Business Suite 7). SAP's sales department also failed to promote Hana and S/4.

SAP spent ten years trying to establish S/4 in the ERP market. Acceptance was muted right from the start. SAP tried to promote the ECC successor to customers with new programs, incentives, and even threats. Although exact figures are unavailable, after ten years, only around half of all SAP systems appear to have been converted to S/4 Hana.

SAP Hana was the prototype

With the Hana database, SAP attempted to establish a sustainable monopoly in the middleware and data management sector. Due to the irrevocable announcement that only the Hana database with the Linux operating system would be available for future SAP ERP systems, SAP customers were forced to purchase Hana. The experiment was a success, and SAP continues to earn excellent money with Hana license fees.

SAP expected a similar outcome with S/4, but customers had the option of ERP/ECC 6.0 and SoH (Suite on Hana, i.e., SAP Business Suite 7). For the past ten years, SAP has been requesting an upgrade to S/4, but the sales department has only been able to convince half of the customers, at most. More customers have an S/4 license than have upgraded their ECC systems. This discrepancy between licenses and operational systems is a major challenge for the global ERP market leader.

SAP Cloud ERP Suite

The name "S/4" has lost its appeal. The release change to S/4 has essentially been canceled. At the SAP 2025 Annual General Meeting, CEO Christian Klein delivered an excellent introductory speech on the 2024 consolidated financial statements and did not mention S/4 Hana at all! This overview for shareholders can be summarized as "Suite First" and "AI First."

In the new language, and probably in a new customer evolution roadmap, this will therefore mean: Cloud ERP Suite first with BTP (SAP Business Technology Platform) and BDC (SAP Business Data Cloud) first, with the inclusion of GenAI. Hana will of course require continuous maintence, but after 2030, no one at SAP will be talking about S/4—this product is a one-way street.