This blog contains experience gained over the years of implementing (and de-implementing) large scale IT applications/software.

Release 2023 of SAP S/4HANA Last Target

The 2023 release of SAP S/4HANA is due in October 2023.
This release is likely the last release that existing SAP ERP customers can reasonably migrate to.

Here’s why

Any customer migrating to S/4HANA from SAP ERP will need to perform all the analysis and preparation work against this 2023 S/4HANA release (functional capabilities will be known).

The next S/4HANA release will be in late 2025 because after the 2023 release the product moves to a new 2 year release cycle (instead of annually).

This 2025 date is likely to be too late for any reasonably large customer to migrate to, as it would leave only 2 years until 2027 (end of maintenance for SAP ERP) and taking into consideration of the start of end-of-maintenance of Compatibility Scope items (see my other post about those here).

Running an SAP ERP to S/4HANA migration project quicker than 2 years is possible, but this depends heavily on existing environment complexity.

I would bet that for most, 2023 is *the* target S/4HANA release.  The saint release as I’m calling it.

Reference link: https://news.sap.com/2022/09/new-sap-s4hana-release-maintenance-strategy/