And it does move!

Galileo saw the sun in the center and said defiantly: "And yet it moves." He was referring to the earth - so much for the anecdote, without any claim to historical validity.

What was recognized this week at the DSAG Annual Congress is not an anecdote, but bitterly serious for existing SAP customers: Based on current planning, there can be no Business Suite on Hana, i.e. SoH, from 2025! What had happened?

In SAP service note 1648480 (the PDF document is available to E-3 Magazine), the end of support for the Abap stack of NetWeaver 7.5 is specified as 2025. For the Java stack of NW 7.5, the end is already 2024 - best wishes to Oracle and Larry Ellison.

The bad news: SAP Business Suite 7 naturally needs NetWeaver as its "runtime system". The good news is that the SAP service note only discontinues the system we know today. SAP may continue the NetWeaver Abap stack with an increased maintenance fee or there may be "extended maintenance".

There could also be alternatives for Oracle's Java and thus also replacements for the NetWeaver Oracle Java stack. What certainly cannot work, however, is the statement by DSAG boss Marco Lenck:

"The Business Suite will continue to run with NetWeaver 7.5 even after 2025."

Technically, of course, he is right, because the essential NetWeaver 7.5 will not disappear into thin air on January 1, 2026. But what Lenck overlooks: For existing SAP customers, an operationally running system is only half the battle.

SoH users also need legal certainty regarding their licenses, maintenance, support and legal changes, etc. The SAP service note has put an end to this for the time being, even if, as Marco Lenck said at the DSAG press conference, the systems are naturally moving forward in purely technical terms.