SAP S/4HANA Release Strategy (Updated)

SAP has recently, on September 12 2022, announced the new SAP S/4HANA release strategy along with a new extended maintenance schedule for SAP S/4HANA 1709, SAP S/4HANA 1809, and SAP S/4HANA 1909 in order to provide customers with increased flexibility and innovation.

The most recent version of SAP’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software is known as SAP S/4HANA. The software was released as the fourth product generation in 2015 and is based on the cutting-edge SAP HANA database technology.

The SAP S/4HANA Cloud solution and the On-Premise solution are both available to enterprise customers as options.

New SAP S/4HANA Release Strategy

With the initial release of SAP S/4HANA 1511, there have been a total of 7 more releases made available so far. These releases include 1610, 1709, 1809, 2020, 2021, and 2022.

The new SAP S/4HANA release 2023, which will be made available in October of 2023, is a release that is considered a go-to release for both compatibility with legacy software and next-generation technology.

Every year up until and including SAP S/4HANA 2022, SAP has released new S/4HANA product versions along with two Feature Package Stacks(FPS). From this latest release, SAP S/4HANA will move to a release cycle that occurs 2-years with 3-feature packages or more.

We will now only have a new version available once every two years, as opposed to releasing a new version annually in the past.

The SAP S/4HANA 2023 release is a major milestone in the evolution of the system, and it will enable customers to provide even more services, best practices, and business process optimization to existing and new clients, allowing them to reach their full potential of intelligent enterprise.

Customers may find it simpler to update and maintain their S/4HANA environment if they go to SAP S/4HANA 2023. This upgraded environment allows businesses to innovate continuously without interruption and prepares them to go to the cloud when the time comes.

New SAP S/4HANA Maintenance Strategy

Customers that are using SAP S/4HANA 1709, SAP S/4HANA 1809, or SAP S/4HANA 1909 will be able to take advantage of an extended maintenance option for those releases and corresponding add-ons beginning on January 1, 2023 and continuing until December 31, 2025.

Customers running those releases will now have the ability to directly upgrade to SAP S/4HANA 2023, saving them the time and money required to complete an interim upgrade project.

With SAP S/4HANA 2023, the length of time that a release receives mainstream maintenance is increasing from 5-years to 7-years.

When you combine SAP’s extended support for SAP Business Suite 7 with their dedication to the SAP S/4HANA platform until the year 2040, you have an attractive proposition. That way, customers can maximize the flexibility of their business operations while safeguarding their current investments, unlocking the full potential of innovation in the process.

More information in SAP Note 3246630 – Extended maintenance for SAP S/4HANA 1709, SAP S/4HANA 1809 and SAP S/4HANA 1909.

Summary

Customers of SAP will have more options for when and how they can upgrade their systems as a result of SAP’s newly implemented S/4HANA release and maintenance plan, which also assists customers in innovating to become smarter enterprises. Below are the highlights

• 2-year release cycle starting with SAP S/4HANA 2023.
• 7-years maintenance per release up from five years in previous releases.
• Extended maintenance for SAP S/4HANA 1709, 1809 and 1909 releases.
• Extended maintenance is included with no additional fee with RISE with SAP (or) SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud subscriptions.

References

For more details and information on the strategy, follow the link to the official announcement in SAP SAP News Center Website