In the second quarter of 2025, SAP will announce an offering called “SAP ERP, private edition, transition option.” This cloud subscription service is designed to help large customers with complex installations on a RISE with SAP journey from SAP ERP systems to SAP cloud ERP.

Here, we will give a brief preview on what this offering will be about and how customers will benefit from it.

Already today, thousands of SAP customers have successfully leveraged SAP cloud solutions to transform their businesses, achieve agility, and increase efficiencies. We see our customers unlocking new innovations through modernization of their business processes and embracing a cloud operating model.  For most SAP customers, it is not a matter of whether they are going to move from their legacy systems, but a question of how quickly they can do this in the overall context of their business and IT transformation.

As we approach 2030 and the end of extended maintenance for on-premise SAP ERP systems, this transformation becomes even more important. Continuing to use these systems beyond 2030 will become increasingly challenging and risk prone, as, for example, third-party products like older Java versions will no longer be supported from the respective vendors.

On the other hand, we know that SAP customers with very large and complex on-premise IT landscapes — including a large number of SAP ERP systems, some in the hundreds — require flexibility to move each part of their landscape to the cloud with the pace and agility needed to support evolving business requirements.

To help customers in this situation better prepare for the future, we will introduce a new cloud subscription offering, SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, designed to help our largest and most complex customers plan, execute and succeed in their cloud transformation.

This new offering will be an SAP ERP cloud subscription centered around SAP ECC, along with a set of dedicated services to help with the transformation to SAP cloud ERP. It will also support business continuity with patches for security, legal and software issues. It will be available for purchase starting in 2028 and will be active for usage from 2031-2033. SAP is pre-disclosing this offering because we understand that customers with complex landscapes need advance notice, hence we want to give sufficient time for planning purposes.

It is an additional and non-mandatory offering. Customers who are planning to complete their transformation journey by the end of 2030 will not need it. SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, is intended for customers who require additional time and support.

The offering will have a set of conditions, including:

• The scope of products will be centered around SAP ECC; it will not include the full scope of SAP Business Suite 7 that is only available for subscription until end of 2030. SAP will make the eligible scope of products transparent starting later this year.
• Systems relevant for the SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, need to be moved to SAP ERP, private edition prior to the end of 2030.
• In order to be able to subscribe to the new offering from 2031 to latest end of 2033, a set of preparations are required: SAP HANA is the only supported database for the new subscription offering; there will be a set of further adjustments needed, e.g. as third-party technology, such as older versions of Java, are no longer supported.
• More details will be announced closer to availability-to-purchase in 2028.

The natural next step and target after utilizing the new offering would then be a transition to SAP cloud ERP.

To clarify, we would like to emphasize that this is not a maintenance prolongation of SAP ERP. There are no changes for customers running on-premise SAP ERP systems after 2030.

The new offering, SAP ERP, private edition, transition option, will come at an expanded fee in 2031-2033 compared to a comparable ERP cloud subscription before 2031. Naturally, due to the complexity in offering such a service, this is targeted to larger and complex systems. More details will be shared with the broader launch in Q2 2025 and once we move closer to the contractual availability of the offering in 2028.

Feel encouraged to contact your SAP account executive or SAP partner to learn more and get started planning.

Stefan Steinle is executive vice president and head of Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management at SAP.

Customer support is one of the cornerstones of a successful business, yet it remains one of the most complex and demanding areas of the knowledge economy. It requires synthesizing vast amounts of information — including customer business needs, industry specifics, technology, and governance — into actionable insights. 

At SAP, we’ve harnessed the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and other data-driven technologies to revolutionize customer support, turning it into a seamless, efficient, and value-added experience.

The Evolution of the Knowledge Economy

Beyond resolving everyday challenges, we continue to serve our customers as true business partners, collaborating with them to help them achieve their broader business goals. While we live in a knowledge economy, where economic value is derived from that knowledge and how we apply it, this paradigm is changing. As humans, our role in the economy is evolving as AI systems increasingly replicate human cognitive skills — retrieving and using the right knowledge at the right time.

In this new paradigm, success will be determined not by how much you know, but by how effectively you can allocate and manage resources to get work done. In customer support, this means moving from simply resolving issues to orchestrating AI tools and human expertise to deliver optimal outcomes.

AI, including generative AI, becomes a collaborative partner, enabling support teams to allocate resources efficiently and focus on higher-value tasks. Recognizing this paradigm shift, we go beyond resolving everyday challenges and serve our customers as true business partners, collaborating with them to help them achieve their broader business goals — as the world changes.

AI Is the Perfect Partner for Customer Support Transformation

At SAP, AI is built into core business processes of customers, connecting finance, supply chain, procurement, sales, marketing, human resources, and IT. Data-driven technologies such as AI, robotic process automation (RPA), and process mining elevate support experiences for our customers. They do it by simplifying support access, addressing complex scenarios using AI agents, and enhancing automation to increase efficiency while delivering personalized solutions, as well as taking advantage of system metrics and process insights.

The Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management organization at SAP also drives AI innovation to analyze process metrics collected from the customer’s systems to evaluate efficiency, bottlenecks, and opportunities for improvement; improve processes using domain-specific machine learning models; and build AI solutions that can be integrated into applications used in a business process or scenario.

Generative AI: Elevating Customer Support

Generative AI has been a game-changer for customer support. It empowers our support teams by enhancing the quality and speed of outcomes and enabling more personalized recommendations for customers. It also opens new possibilities for orchestrating AI services in combination with AI agents.

AI agents streamline support processes by automating time-consuming tasks, such as retrieving and assessing information, while enabling human-machine collaboration. This allows support professionals to focus on improving both customer satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Real-World Impact: AI Use Cases in Customer Support

SAP has developed more than 50 AI-driven use cases, showcasing the transformative power of AI in customer support. These include:

• Precise and fast generative AI-infused recommendations appear for customers while they type their requests. Customers also benefit from proactive recommendations on trending content and preventative recommendations like system health checks.
• Smart ticket routing ensures support tickets reach the right experts, quickly.
• Proactive issue identification detects and addresses potential problems before they escalate.
• Internal workflow enhancements deliver efficiency gains from workflows such as intelligent search, automated error categorization, clustering of tickets with the same root cause, or expert swarming for complex issues.

Other generative AI capabilities include summarizing tickets, assisting in knowledge creation, and improving communication with customers.

These advances not only elevate support experiences for SAP customers, but also create significant efficiencies for our support engineers.

The SAP Advantage

SAP’s AI-driven support strategy is structured around three key pillars:

1. Capturing business opportunities with domain-specific AI models: By leveraging our domain expertise and historical data, we design machine learning models tailored to specific support challenges. These models enable precise and actionable recommendations.
2. Gathering real-world process insights: Using tools like SAP Signavio, we capture and analyze detailed process insights. This provides a solid foundation for identifying improvement opportunities.
3. Building and integrating AI solutions: We integrate AI-driven solutions into existing workflows, ensuring seamless application and measurable impact. Process insights guide ongoing refinements and enhancements.

And the numbers speak for themselves: SAP’s AI support scenarios are called up more than 1 million times by our customers on an average day. More than 35,000 end users use our AI capabilities per month.

The Road Ahead: Human-Machine Collaboration in Support

The future of customer support lies in human-machine collaboration. By combining the analytical power of AI with human expertise, we can deliver unparalleled support experiences. AI agents will play a pivotal role in this transformation, assisting with things like ticket triage, data analysis, and troubleshooting, thereby enabling support teams to focus on strategic activities. As AI continues to evolve, these agents will become even more capable of providing real-time insights and proactive solutions to anticipate customer needs before they arise.

SAP’s commitment to AI-driven innovation ensures that we remain at the forefront of customer support transformation. By continuously evolving our AI capabilities, we are setting the stage for a new era of value-driven, scalable, and efficient customer support.

But there is one thing that AI will never replace: the empathy, care, and passion of our support teams, ensuring every customer feels supported as we solve their challenges together. The future of customer support lies in blending AI’s analytical power with human expertise. By working together, we’re setting a new standard for customer success.

Thomas Saueressig is a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE leading Customer Services & Delivery.
Stefan Steinle is executive vice president and head of Customer Support & Cloud Lifecycle Management at SAP.