Expanding Section: The Implication of Implementing S/4HANA

As S/4HANA uses a different database schema from ECC, S/4HANA is the first ERP system that will break all integrations and customizations that customers added to ECC. SAP has released information on these topics that indicates it prefers to obscure this issue as it would negatively impact S/4HANA purchases. SAP has instead performed a classic pivot and has said that S/4HANA represents an “opportunity” to SAP customers to evaluate all current customizations and to remove them. SAP is silent on the topic of integrations that will break and will need to be rewritten when S/4HANA is implemented.

S/4HANA is charged as a new application even for customers that have been paying maintenance for years on ECC. SAP pulled S/4HANA out of the normal upgrade terms, where new versions are free, by declaring that S/4HANA is the “logical successor,” but not the “legal successor” to ECC. Therefore S/4HANA has been set up so that ECC customers will be charged twice, a topic which is covered in the Brightwork article Why S/4HANA Should be Free.

S/4HANA means re-implementing the ERP system and doing so in a manner that is piecemeal. IT departments along with the SAP consulting companies are generally staffed analyze and to implement far more stable and simpler applications than S/4HANA. Consulting companies that are going after the S/4HANA implementation business are, from the information coming to us from accounts are, by in large, underplaying the complexity of S/4HANA to their accounts.