SAP promises ERP upgrades without disruption and extends maintenance

Jim Hagemann Snabe, co-CEO of SAP, says that the enterprise software giant will introduce software enhancements on a quarterly schedule in areas where customers can benefit most, including mobility, in-memory computing technology and cloud computing. Users will be able to determine their own rates of change, based on their needs and ability to fulfil, he says – and specifically without major upgrade effort. More information will follow at SAPPHIRE NOW and SAP TechEd 2011 in Madrid, from 8—10 November 2011. The point, though, is that SAP plans to make both evolutionary and breakthrough innovations available in a non-disruptive fashion on a quarterly schedule. To make that work, SAP now intends to extend mainstream maintenance for core SAP Business Suite 7 applications, including SAP ERP 6.0, by five years, from 2015 to December 2020. The longer maintenance also applies to the SAP NetWeaver and all current SAP enhancement packages for SAP Business Suite. The UK & Ireland SAP User Group has welcomed the news. "It gives [SAP users] certainty around the product for the rest of the decade," comments its chairman Alan Bowling. "One of things that you always want to avoid in IT is wholesale change as it creates a raft of challenges and costs," he continues. "The important thing here is that SAP is giving customers the choice in how and when they adopt some of the innovative technologies and solutions the company is developing." And he adds: "We'd also expect to see more organisations upgrade to the latest versions, as they can now see a clear long-term future for the product… In what is still a challenging time for many organisations, some predictability of the future is welcomed." "Our innovation strategy and the resulting maintenance timelines will give customers predictability of their SAP projects and accelerate the adoption of new innovations from SAP," comments SAP's Hagemann Snabe. "This helps them to become more productive, free up resources and run their businesses even better. The speed of innovation combined with the long-term predictability is unparalleled in the software industry, and demonstrates our commitment to enduring, mutually beneficial customer partnerships," he adds.