For the tens of thousands of organizations running SAP ERP Central Component (ECC), the year 2027 represents a strategic crossroads. SAP has mandated an end to mainstream maintenance for its legacy platform, positioning a migration to its next-generation S/4HANA suite as the default, and seemingly inevitable, path forward. However, this report serves as a critical debate, arguing that this prescribed transition is fraught with significant financial risks, operational complexities, and strategic drawbacks that demand executive scrutiny. The core thesis is that viable, and often superior, alternatives exist. These strategic options range from a deliberate deferral of the decision via third-party maintenance to a complete migration to modern, non-SAP cloud ERPs. This analysis will equip business and technology leaders to challenge the default path and regain control of their enterprise technology roadmap.
Accurately assessing the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and inherent risks of an S/4HANA migration is a critical strategic exercise. To treat this transition as a purely technical upgrade is to overlook the deep-seated complexities in cost, technical debt, and resource availability that can jeopardize the project’s value and timeline. A clear-eyed analysis reveals that the mandated path is not a simple upgrade but a comprehensive business transformation with profound financial and operational implications.
The financial burden of an S/4HANA migration is not merely a line item; it is a landscape of often-unforeseen liabilities. Executive sponsors must look beyond SAP’s initial quotes, as the true TCO is buried in the following components, each representing a potential point of project failure. For a Fortune 500 company, for example, total costs quoted for a migration from SAP ECC to S/4HANA can be upwards of 400 million dollars for a three-year project. This figure is a composite of several high-cost components that must be individually evaluated.
Beyond the direct financial outlay, the migration process imposes significant operational and technical burdens that act as a “transformation tax” on the organization.
Migrating from ECC to S/4HANA requires adapting numerous custom ABAP objects to run on the new architecture. SAP recommends multiple changes to this legacy code, a task that can require the equivalent of several person-years of dedicated development effort. This remediation process represents a substantial project in itself and is a primary source of risk and potential delays.
Organizations must choose between two starkly different implementation approaches, each with its own set of risks and rewards.
| Migration Approach | Strategic Analysis |
| Greenfield (New Implementation) | High Reward, High Risk: Offers a “clean slate” to redesign processes and eliminate legacy constraints, but requires a higher upfront investment, a longer project timeline (12-24 months), and greater short-term operational disruption. |
| Brownfield (System Conversion) | Limited Innovation, High Hidden Risk: A faster, less disruptive option that preserves historical data. However, it carries forward “old inefficiencies and technical debt” and can lead to “potential audit issues, security vulnerabilities, and missed opportunities” if treated as a purely technical exercise, making it a potential false economy. Critically, this approach risks overlooking profound impacts on security and GRC frameworks, as a technical migration does not automatically translate existing controls to S/4HANA’s new architecture, creating significant audit and compliance exposure. |
Even when the technical path is clear, non-technical barriers frequently derail migration projects. A recent survey of organizations undertaking the migration identified the top challenges as:
The scarcity of specialized talent further exacerbates migration risks and inflates costs. As organizations move to S/4HANA, hiring managers are shifting their focus away from classic ECC skills toward expertise in modern ABAP development for HANA, including Core Data Services (CDS) views, the ABAP RESTful Application Programming (RAP) model, and UI/UX design with Fiori. These are no longer niche skills but core requirements for a successful project. The market reflects this shift: BTP-certified consultants are experiencing 25-35% higher placement rates, underscoring the fierce competition for the essential skills required to execute a modern S/4HANA project successfully.
The immense financial and operational hurdles associated with the S/4HANA migration make it a high-risk proposition for even the most well-resourced enterprises. These challenges are further compounded by SAP’s primary commercial vehicle for this transition: RISE with SAP.
RISE with SAP is the vendor’s primary bundled offering for migrating ECC customers to the cloud. While marketed as a pathway to simplification, this “business transformation as a service” introduces significant strategic risks related to the loss of asset ownership, increased vendor dependency, and opaque licensing models that must be carefully scrutinized before any commitment is made.
The commercial model underpinning RISE with SAP represents a fundamental departure from traditional enterprise software procurement.
This shift has profound long-term TCO implications. While a subscription avoids a large upfront investment, the ongoing fees can quickly surpass the cost of perpetual ownership. Financial analysis indicates the break-even point where owning a perpetual license becomes cheaper is often around 4–6 years.
The structure of the RISE offering is a primary source of strategic vendor lock-in. By bundling software, cloud hosting, support, and other services into a single, multi-year agreement, SAP centralizes control and reduces customer flexibility.
A key concern is the loss of hyperscaler flexibility. Although customers can select their preferred cloud infrastructure provider—AWS, Azure, or GCP—the contract is held solely with SAP. This removes the customer’s direct relationship with the cloud provider, eliminating the customer’s ability to negotiate directly on infrastructure costs and SLAs, and forfeiting a key point of leverage in the technology supply chain. Furthermore, attempting to exit any single component of the bundle can result in “severe penalties,” making the organization dependent on SAP for the entire technology stack.
The RISE model introduces a new licensing metric and elevates the importance of negotiating strong contractual safeguards to protect data sovereignty.
The RISE with SAP model, while offering the convenience of a managed service, fundamentally trades strategic control, negotiating power, and long-term financial predictability for that convenience. This trade-off should lead prudent organizations to evaluate concrete alternatives that offer greater freedom and financial clarity.
For organizations feeling pressured by the 2027 deadline, Third-Party Maintenance (TPM) presents a powerful strategic alternative. This is not a permanent solution, but rather a deliberate strategy to regain control over the IT roadmap, generate significant cost savings, and create the financial and operational space to plan a more thoughtful, value-driven transformation on the company’s own timeline, free from vendor-imposed deadlines.
Switching from SAP-provided support to a specialized TPM provider offers several compelling and immediate advantages.
The strategic impact of adopting TPM extends beyond immediate cost reduction. The 50% savings generated from annual maintenance fees can be reallocated from a recurring operational cost into a dedicated strategic fund. This capital can then be used to finance the necessary planning, data cleansing, resource upskilling, and proof-of-concept work for a future transformation that is driven by business value, not by a vendor-imposed deadline.
The TPM market is led by two established providers with distinct market positions.
| Provider | Market Position & Strengths |
| Rimini Street | The market leader and world’s largest provider, noted for its scale, proven track record with Fortune 500 companies, comprehensive scope, and proactive delivery of compliance and security updates. |
| Spinnaker Support | A strong #2 contender, often praised as a “boutique” provider with consistently high customer satisfaction ratings (approaching 98%), personalized service, and flexible one-year contracts with no long-term lock-in. |
Third-Party Maintenance offers a compelling and low-risk strategy for ECC customers to escape the immediate pressure of the 2027 deadline. By generating significant savings and extending the life of a stable system, it provides the critical time and resources needed to plan a more strategic next move, which could include a complete platform alternative.
The end of ECC support should be viewed not as a threat, but as a strategic opportunity to move beyond the SAP ecosystem entirely. For organizations burdened by years of customization and seeking greater business agility, a Greenfield implementation of a modern, cloud-native ERP can deliver transformative value faster and with a lower TCO than a complex and costly S/4HANA migration.
Several mature, cloud-native ERP platforms offer compelling alternatives to S/4HANA, each with distinct strengths.
Modern, cloud-native ERPs offer faster, more agile, and potentially more cost-effective paths to modernization than migrating within the technically and commercially complex SAP ecosystem. For organizations prepared to embrace a clean slate, these platforms provide a direct route to true business transformation.
This report has demonstrated that the default S/4HANA migration path forces SAP ECC customers to confront extreme costs, significant operational risks, and a damaging loss of strategic control through vendor lock-in. The narrative that this is the only viable option is a false choice. Superior strategic alternatives are available—ranging from deliberate deferral to complete platform replacement—and must be given serious consideration by any leadership team focused on long-term value creation.
To navigate the 2027 crossroads effectively, enterprise leaders should adopt the following three-step strategic roadmap:
November 4, 2025
October 31, 2025
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