Insights
Mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC ends in 2027, with paid extensions to 2030. Every published guide to this deadline is written by someone selling a migration. This one is written from the client side, and it costs all four options honestly, including the one nobody sells.
By Christopher Fagan, PEF Consulting Partners. 3 September 2026.
Your ECC system does not stop working in 2027. What ends is mainstream maintenance: security notes, legal updates and support on standard terms. The practical consequences arrive gradually, through compliance risk, a shrinking skills market, and rising cost for the extension options. The danger is not a cliff edge, it is drift: organisations that defer the decision until the good choices have expired.
Move to S/4HANA. The path SAP wants you on, and the right one for organisations whose processes genuinely fit SAP and whose estate justifies the investment. Be clear eyed that it is a reimplementation, not an upgrade: budget and govern it as a full programme, with the data work, client team and testing that implies. Our guides on what ERP really costs and how long it really takes apply in full.
Pay for extended maintenance to 2030. Rational as a bridge with a decision attached and a programme underway. Ruinous as a substitute for deciding, because you pay a rising premium for standing still and the eventual work does not shrink. If the extension is your plan, the honest question is what specifically you are buying time to do.
Leave SAP altogether. For some estates the deadline is the prompt to ask whether SAP is the right answer at all. Mid market businesses often find modern cloud ERP fits better at lower cost; utilities running IS U face a genuine platform choice, covered in our analysis of the 2027 and 2030 decision facing UK and Irish utilities and our independent platform comparison.
Run unsupported. Nobody sells this option, which is why it deserves an honest look and, for most, an honest rejection. Third party support firms will maintain a frozen estate for less than SAP charges. For a stable estate heading for divestment or decommissioning it can be rational. For a living business it accumulates compliance and skills risk quietly, and the exit only gets harder.
Start from the operating model you want in 2030, not from the licence deadline. Do the data honesty work now, because it is needed under every option and it will inform the choice better than any vendor roadmap. Test your delivery capacity honestly, because the integrator market will only get busier as 2027 approaches. And put independent capability on your own side of the table before the first vendor workshop, because the decision is worth more than the discount.
For indicative costs, see what SAP S/4HANA costs in the UK.
If your billing runs on SAP IS U, these dates are yours too, and in Ireland they also reach the market’s central systems. See SAP IS U end of support and what energy suppliers must change before 2030.
Mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC 6.0 ends on 31 December 2027. Optional extended maintenance runs to the end of 2030 at a higher fee, and a transition option for very large estates, run in SAP’s private cloud, extends support to the end of 2033.
Choose the approach first: a conversion of your current system, a fresh implementation or a selective transition. Then assess custom code and data, plan integrations and testing, and rehearse the cutover. Most programmes take one to three years.
Independent, senior advice from people who have owned large SAP and Microsoft estates. A short conversation now is worth more than a rescue later.