The end of standard maintenance in December 2027 is no longer a distant concern for most SAP ECC customers. Staying on SAP ECC past that deadline means paying roughly 2% more maintenance fees.
While that looming cost is well-known, another critical deadline often flies under the radar. In December 2025, the compatibility mode that allows SAP ECC functionality to continue operating within SAP S/4HANA will expire for on-premise customers.
The lesser-known 2025 deadline raises the stakes. Compatibility mode has long served as a bridge, allowing companies to run SAP ECC-style transactions in SAP S/4HANA without undergoing immediate process transformation. Once it disappears, organizations still on-premises will be forced into more disruptive conversions. More importantly, they will lose the strategic ability to decouple technical conversion from business transformation.
Migrating to SAP Cloud ERP Private preserves that bridge until 2030, granting five additional years to plan change on more manageable terms.
Migrate Now, Transform at Your Own Pace
As a global end-to-end technology provider and SAP Partner with a long history alongside IBM, SEIDOR brings both credibility and a clear mission to the mid-market migration story, typically for organizations with revenues of $1.5 billion and below. With a footprint spanning 85 offices, more than 10,000 employees, over 8,000 customers, and annual revenues exceeding $1 billion, SEIDOR is positioned to serve enterprises across industries.
Meanwhile, IBM Cloud has been added to the list of hyperscalers that can run SAP Cloud ERP Private, alongside AWS, Google, and Microsoft. It is the only cloud supports IBM Power Virtual Server so that IBM Power customers can have a least disruptive path to adopt RISE with SAP journey without replatform or refactoring off the IBM Power platform. With this certification, IBM also marked the general availability of Brownfield migrations at the end of September. That development gives customers a way to move forward while carrying their SAP ECC investments with them.
Many companies choose Brownfield for that reason, since Greenfield often means starting from zero and discarding years of system development and IT investments. And for customers requiring a more selective path, SEIDOR can also deliver Bluefield migrations in partnership with SNP, giving organizations the flexibility to reduce their data footprint while moving to SAP S/4HANA.
At the foundation of this joint approach lies IBM Power Virtual Server, designed to reduce risks and accelerate timelines. Because Power Virtual Server has the consistent architecture stack as IBM Power on-premises, migrations can be executed 15–25% faster than re-platforming to other cloud providers. That consistency reduces complexity at every stage.
IBM Power also drives cost efficiency by provisioning SAP HANA instances with more granularity, aligning capacity with demand and avoiding unnecessary oversizing. This advantage is especially relevant for SAP Cloud ERP Private customers running large HANA footprints above 6TB. Where another provider might require 23TB of capacity to support a 16.5TB need, IBM can provision closer to 18TB. The result is a lower total cost of ownership. Beyond cost savings, reliability further strengthens the case.
IBM Power has led SAP-certified servers in availability for 15 years running, a record that matters for companies where uptime is critical, providing the confidence that shifting to the cloud won’t come at the expense of stability.
SEIDOR’s AI-Powered Acceleration
Having the right infrastructure in place does not make the migration challenge disappear. The biggest hurdle for many organizations is the amount of custom code that has built up in SAP ECC environments over years of use. In some cases, tens of thousands of objects need to be reviewed, remediated, or retired. Traditional methods for handling this backlog can demand as much as 30,000 developer hours, which explains why so many projects stall before they even begin.
SEIDOR tackles this bottleneck with its AI-powered MIGNOW solution. By automating up to 97% of custom code remediation, SEIDOR eliminates the need for “armies” of ABAP developers and reduces the remediation workload to a fraction of what it would otherwise be.
In practice, this means cutting project duration by 40–60% and significantly reducing costs. The technical conversion no longer needs to be a multi-year undertaking that drains resources; it becomes a faster, more predictable process with minimal disruption.
SEIDOR builds on these efficiencies with predefined migration bundles that extend value into the future through subscription entitlements for ongoing SAP S/4HANA upgrades. With major releases every two years—first in 2025 and then in 2027—customers avoid the kind of locked-in scenario that plagued SAP ECC.
By staying current, organizations maximize ROI, maintain compliance, and stay on the clean core path. Keeping a clean core makes it easier to eliminate custom code, adopt standard processes, and extend capabilities through SAP Business Technology Platform without undermining future upgrades.
For organizations ready to take the next step, there are two clear entry points. SEIDOR’s Free Assessment uses the SAP Readiness Check alongside a brief questionnaire to generate a project timeline, cost estimate, and recommended bundle. These bundles are structured under three-year subscription contracts with monthly pricing and are based on custom code complexity and SAP ECC modules in scope, ensuring that effort is aligned with the realities of each customer environment.
Another path is to hear directly from the experts. At the IBM TechXchange 2025 conference in Orlando, I will share the stage with Ming Christensen, IBM Product Management Director. Our joint session, Migration Acceleration to SAP Cloud ERP Private on IBM Power Virtual Server, takes place Tuesday, October 7, from 5:00–6:00 PM EDT.
One month later, SEIDOR, IBM, and SAP will convene again in New York City for an event at the IBM Innovation Studioon Wednesday, November 12, 2025. The session will offer a deeper look at strategies, tools, and proven approaches to ERP transformation. Sign up today!
By meeting the urgency of migration with the flexibility of SEIDOR’s solutions, organizations can move forward on their own terms.
This blog was originally published by ASUG as Partner Insight, and was authorized by Christopher Hesch, CTO & Head of SAP Presales at SEIDOR North America. Image courtesy of ASUG.