For many enterprise decision makers, SAP contract renewals are a January problem, something to think about after the holidays. The reality, however, is that critical decisions often need to be made months earlier, and letting September pass without evaluating your options risks another year (or more) of vendor lock-in and IT budget constraints.
For many SAP customers, support agreements renew automatically in January. The decision to terminate or modify those support agreements, however, means acting much sooner. Most SAP contracts come with a three-month notice period, which pushes the real decision deadline forward to late September.
Auto-renewed support contracts often lead to higher fees for the same service, meaning money that could have funded more strategically valuable IT projects gets tied up in maintenance for at least another twelve months. As a result, September is a critical milestone in the IT calendar.
The decision to stand still, to let contracts auto-renew and hope for the best, therefore, isn’t a neutral choice. Every year your organisation defers, it deepens your dependence on a single vendor, leaving less budget and less freedom to invest in projects that actually move the business forward. The customers who want that freedom are the ones acting now rather than waiting to be told when their window has already closed.
It’s the September notice period that shapes next year’s IT budget.
SAP maintenance contracts affect more than an annual support budget. It’s a decision that I see being put off (and off again) by decision-makers, despite its influence on transformation timelines, investment priorities and the basic level of flexibility organisations have in their ERP roadmaps.
The real issue is timing. By the time January renewal conversations begin, many organisations have already lost the practical opportunity to change course for the year ahead. Contract review, financial modelling, technical assessment and executive approval all take time. For SAP customers weighing whether to stay the course or explore third-party support, renegotiate terms or revisit their ERP roadmap, September is the moment to preserve optionality before another cycle begins.
The timing is especially important for companies running core applications of SAP Business Suite 7, such as SAP ECC 6.0, for which mainstream support is scheduled to end on December 31, 2027. While SAP offers extended maintenance through 2030, that support may come with additional fees and more administrative hoops for users to jump through. One estimate suggests extended maintenance on end-of-life products can add approximately 9% to 12% to total support costs when combined with SAP’s annual increases.
Despite the headaches associated with end-of-life products, the sheer scale and cost of an S/4HANA migration mean plenty of organisations are still weighing their options. Analyst data showed that, at the end of 2024, just 39% of the roughly 35,000 SAP ECC customers had migrated to S/4HANA. It’s projected that 40% to 45% of ECC users could remain on the legacy ERP through 2027. It’s not entirely surprising that businesses are reluctant to upgrade their SAP stacks. Migrations eat into IT budgets, requiring substantial planning and often years of work to execute. In a large enterprise, ECC environments have likely only just stabilised after the last transformation cycle. Existing SAP products tend to be deeply integrated into business processes, not to mention the result of significant investments in customisation and associated systems.
Even if your business decides to retain its current SAP environment for several more years while developing a longer-term technology strategy, your support agreement still demands an earlier decision, especially if your IT budget needs breathing room to get ready for the next phase.
Preserving choices ahead of the deadline.
The three-month notice period for January support contract renewal means organisations risk being caught out — assessing whether to migrate, modernise around their existing ERP environment, or pursue another strategy — when the de facto deadline passes them by.
Weighing the alternatives takes time. Contract review, financial analysis, technical assessment, executive approval, and supplier planning are all labour-intensive processes. Similarly, third-party providers also need enough lead time to understand and prepare to support a new customer environment.
It’s why the September deadline is the real cutoff point for the next year of SAP support. If you’re considering shifting to another provider, changing the direction of your IT strategy, or renegotiating existing terms with SAP, the end of September is the moment when the window to make those decisions closes for another 12 months. If you’re in this position, September is your last chance to give SAP notice while continuing to evaluate a longer-term ERP strategy. Allowing a notice deadline to pass means another year of vendor lock-in, expensive support, and IT budget constraints.
Leveraging third-party support and getting ready for the next year of your ERP strategy.
If you want to keep running existing SAP software while considering longer-term technology plans, third-party support can make that happen.
A third-party support partner means your organisation can keep using existing SAP software without relying on SAP itself for assistance with standard functionality, custom code, integrations, tax and regulatory updates, and security and vulnerability management. Some third-party providers have committed to supporting SAP ECC 6.0 and S/4HANA releases through 2040, and customers can achieve total maintenance savings of up to 90% compared with total costs associated with vendor support. Businesses can’t afford not to consider how their support spending fits into an existing technology strategy. Reducing maintenance expenditure frees up capital for value-creation initiatives like AI adoption, application modernisation, process improvement, or selective replacement of existing systems — funding that would otherwise go straight to SAP for more of the same with a higher price tag.
For any SAP customer approaching a renewal of their support contract, the time to act is now.
Not when the invoice or renewal notice appears in January. Now. The September deadline is drawing very, very near. It’s a pivotal opportunity to reassess your support costs, evaluate your technology priorities, and determine the direction of your ERP strategy for the next year and beyond.
James Harvey
James Harvey serves as Theater CTO, EMEA at Rimini Street, where he advises clients on strategic innovation initiatives that align technology with long-term business goals across enterprise applications and architecture. He brings 25 years of leadership experience across banking, financial services, energy, logistics, FMCG, retail, and technology, with deep expertise in strategy, operations, AIOps, security, ERP, SRE, DevOps, and observability. Before joining Rimini Street, he was Executive CTO, EMEA - Observability at Cisco, and earlier held senior IT leadership roles at organisations including RBS, ABN AMRO, New Look, and BP.
