I know we’ve talked a lot about the looming threat on the SAP horizon: the deadline 2025 for the migration to S/4. But this article is not about that.
S/4 is the topic of the day, and rightly so; it is a challenge to get there, and most customers will struggle with it for the next few years. However, few SAP customers know that they also have to switch to in-memory computing database Hana by the 2025 deadline.
It worked perfectly well. SAP sold the databases, and customers paid less for licenses and services. It was a win-win-win situation (for customers, the databases providers, and SAP itself).
In the early stages of Hana, SAP executives were excited – euphoric, almost. In their boundless optimism, they decided on the 2025 deadline and cancelled all contracts with Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. AnyDB customers (using non-Hana databases) can therefore not count on SAP’s support after 2025.
The Hana singularity is inevitable. Even though SAP is slowly realizing its mistake, it’s too late to go back to how things were.
2025 deadline is final
The SAP community has five years to switch databases. Due to this strict schedule, customers will have to focus on the technological aspect for now; still, they will need a lot of resources. Furthermore, SAP still hasn’t consolidated Hana 1, Hana 2, and numerous support packages.
Customers will face enough challenges and obstacles on the road to Hana as it is. The least SAP can do is to provide them with a consolidated, certified, and generally available Hana database.
