From Singapore: The enterprise software world has a looming deadline problem, and fresh data from central Europe shows the scale of it. A survey of nearly 200 senior leaders at organisations across Germany, Austria and Switzerland has found that close to half of those still investing in SAP's legacy ECC platform are not planning to complete their migration to S/4HANA by the end of 2027, when mainstream support from SAP runs out.
The findings, drawn from the DSAG Investment Report 2026, paint a picture familiar to anyone who has tracked large-scale enterprise technology transitions: vendor timelines and customer reality rarely align. The German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG) conducted the survey between December 2025 and January 2026, collecting responses from 198 people in senior leadership roles at organisations running SAP systems.
The numbers are striking. Of those still committing budget to ECC, 49 percent plan to move to S/4HANA by the end of 2030, according to the DSAG data, meaning they will spend at least some time under SAP's extended support arrangement, which carries a 2 percent premium on top of standard maintenance fees. Only 37 percent are on track to complete the transition by the 2027 mainstream support cutoff. A further 4 percent are targeting the end of 2033, a timeline that would require them to sign up to SAP's ERP Private Edition transition pathway, which obliges customers to commit to a migration plan in advance.
Jens Hungershausen, chairman of the DSAG board, was candid about the drivers. Organisations targeting 2030, he said, are not simply procrastinating. As reported by The Register, Hungershausen said the extended timelines reflect genuine IT complexity:
"Skills shortages, parallel transformation projects, and limited budgets are also causing schedules to be pushed back — even if this results in higher maintenance costs."
That is an honest reckoning with the state of enterprise IT. Separate research published by The Register in February 2026 found that the majority of SAP migrations bust their original budgets and project timelines. The same research cited Gartner data showing 39 percent of SAP's roughly 35,000 ECC customers worldwide had yet to migrate as of the fourth quarter of 2024, nearly a decade after S/4HANA launched. Even Airbus, one of the world's largest industrial users of SAP, told The Register it may not complete its migration by 2030.
The Cost of Delay
From a purely fiscal standpoint, the calculus is unfavourable for organisations that slip past 2027. Extended maintenance beyond the mainstream cutoff carries a direct surcharge, and the pool of skilled S/4HANA consultants is expected to tighten considerably as the deadline draws closer and more organisations begin competing for the same expertise. A 2-3 year implementation timeline for large enterprises, which industry analysts widely cite, means any organisation not already deep into planning faces compressing risk. Budget blowouts on major ERP projects are the rule, not the exception, as the recent case of a Canadian vehicles agency spending C$245 million over budget on an SAP implementation illustrates.
For Australian businesses with SAP deployments, the dynamic playing out in the DACH region (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) is a useful leading indicator. Many large Australian enterprises, particularly in mining, resources, and financial services, run SAP ECC at their core. The skills shortage Hungershausen describes is global, not regional. Australian IT teams competing for S/4HANA migration talent will find themselves in a tighter market the longer decisions are deferred.
A Branding Problem SAP Cannot Ignore
The DSAG survey also exposed a separate concern for SAP: its effort to revive the "Business Suite" brand is not landing with customers. In February 2025, SAP relaunched Business Suite as a cloud-native, composable set of applications spanning Cloud ERP, SAP Business AI, SAP Business Data Cloud and Business Technology Platform. The original SAP Business Suite 7, introduced in 2006, included ECC 6, so the branding carries significant history for long-term customers.
The survey asked respondents how strongly their organisations base investment planning on SAP's new Business Suite vision. Only 35 percent said they do so very strongly or strongly. A majority, 62 percent, said they do so less strongly or not at all. Hungershausen put the challenge plainly: customers need clear evidence of added value and integration capability before strategic visions translate into actual spending decisions.
That sentiment is reinforced by a parallel survey of UK and Ireland SAP users, which found licensing and pricing models were the single most-cited area of confusion, flagged by 61 percent of respondents. This is not a niche grievance from budget-constrained mid-market customers. It reflects a structural communications failure between SAP and its established enterprise base at precisely the moment when trust and clarity are most needed.
Reading the Signal
There is a legitimate counterargument to the concern these figures generate. DSAG's Hungershausen is right that planning for a 2030 completion date does not mean waiting until 2030 to begin. Large organisations frequently set conservative internal deadlines precisely because the consequences of failing to complete a migration mid-stream are severe. A target of 2030 for a complex multi-country ECC environment might represent responsible project management rather than delay.
Furthermore, SAP's evolution of its cloud offering has not been without turbulence. Customers who feel they cannot get a straight answer on licensing costs and product roadmaps are not being irrational by holding off on commitments. The DSAG data showing that 78 percent of its members operate hybrid on-premises and cloud environments reflects a considered, risk-aware approach to transformation, not obstinacy.
The pragmatic conclusion is this: the 2027 deadline is real, the cost of missing it is measurable, and the skills market will only get tighter. But SAP also bears genuine responsibility for the hesitation its customers are showing. Opaque licensing, frequent branding changes and an AI strategy that requires cloud adoption before most customers are ready have all contributed to an environment where delay feels safer than commitment. Resolving that requires clearer communication and more transparent pricing from SAP, not just firmer deadline enforcement. Both sides of this equation need to move.