How RISE with SAP Makes Your S/4HANA Migration Seamless (2026 Guide)

RISE with SAP: S/4HANA Migration Guide (2026)

For companies still running SAP ECC, the calendar has become a strategic issue. According to SAP’s current maintenance strategy, mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC 6.0 (Enhancement Packages 6 to 8) ends on December 31, 2027. SAP has repeatedly stated it does not plan to move this date again, though, as with any vendor maintenance strategy, terms can be revised over time.

Extended maintenance is available through 2030, though it may include additional support fees on top of standard maintenance, with a narrower scope and terms that can vary by contract. For most organizations, that makes 2027 the real deadline to plan around, not a distant milestone, and it is one of the main reasons SAP Cloud Migration planning has accelerated across the installed base.

This guide walks through how RISE with SAP addresses that pressure step by step: what it actually is, how its five core components work together, and how it turns an S/4HANA migration from a purely technical project into a managed business transformation. For organizations weighing their options, this is also where independent SAP S/4HANA Consulting support tends to add the most value, helping separate what RISE includes by default from what still needs to be scoped and planned.

For CIOs and CFOs weighing this decision, the calculus usually comes down to three questions: what will it cost, how long will it take, and what happens to the processes and customizations built up over years on the current system. This guide is organized around answering exactly those questions, with a specific focus on where RISE with SAP changes the usual answer.

Digital Transformation Is Inevitable: Why S/4HANA Migration Is on Every Agenda

The End of SAP ECC 6.0 Support (Why 2027Matters)

The 2027 deadline applies specifically to ECC 6.0 with Enhancement Packages 6 through 8, the version most current SAP customers run. Support for earlier Enhancement Packages (0 to 5) already ended in 2025.

After 2027, companies that haven’t migrated lose access to regular support, legal updates, and full security patches unless they pay for extended maintenance through 2030. Tens of thousands of enterprises globally are still running ECC, which is why migration planning has become urgent for so many IT leaders at once.

What Today’s Intelligent Enterprises Need: Speed, Data, and Agility

Beyond the support deadline, the business case for moving off ECC has strengthened on its own. Modern SAP S/4HANA runs on an in-memory database that processes transactions and analytics in real time, rather than in separate batch cycles.

That difference matters most in exactly the areas competitive pressure is highest: closing the books faster, reacting to supply chain disruptions as they happen, and giving leadership a single, current view of the business instead of a report that was accurate last week.

What Is RISE with SAP? Why It’s More Than Just a Product

Rise with SAP bundles SAP S/4HANA Cloud, infrastructure, business process tools, and managed services into a single subscription, delivered under one contract with one point of accountability. SAP describes it as business transformation as a service, and the framing is accurate: the offering is built around outcomes, not just software licenses.

How It Differs from Traditional Migration: One Contract, One Point of Contact

A traditional S/4HANA migration typically means separately sourcing infrastructure, software licenses, and implementation services, often from different vendors with different contracts and different support lines. When something goes wrong, the first job is often figuring out whose responsibility it is.

RISE with SAP consolidates this into one agreement and one primary point of contact. For IT leaders already stretched thin, this alone removes a meaningful amount of vendor management overhead.

The Core Philosophy of RISE with SAP: Holistic Transformation

RISE with SAP is not simply S/4HANA repackaged as a subscription. It combines the software, the cloud infrastructure, business process intelligence tools, and a starter package for supplier collaboration, all designed to move together as one transformation rather than a sequence of disconnected projects.

The 5 Core Components of RISE with SAP and What They Deliver

SAP S/4HANA Cloud: The Digital Core of Your Business

SAP S/4HANA Cloud is the ERP core at the center of RISE with SAP, running finance, supply chain, manufacturing, and sales processes on a single, real-time data model.

Private Cloudand Public CloudOptions

Private cloud suits organizations with complex, highly customized processes that need more configuration control. Public cloud suits organizations willing to adopt more standardized, best-practice processes in exchange for faster deployment and lower ongoing management overhead. Choosing between them is one of the first, and most consequential, decisions in a RISE with SAP project.

Business Process Intelligence

Analyze Your Processes, Uncover Improvement Areas

Business Process Intelligence gives you visibility into how your processes actually run today, not how the process documentation says they should run, by mining data directly from your systems. That means you can identify bottlenecks, such as an approval step that quietly adds three days to every purchase order, before you carry that inefficiency into your new S/4HANA environment.

In practice, this often surfaces process variants nobody remembers approving: an exception handling step added years ago for one customer that somehow became the default path for everyone. Catching these before migration is far cheaper than untangling them afterward, once they are embedded in the new system’s configuration.

SAP Business Technology Platform(BTP) Consumption Credits

Flexibility for Innovation and Integration

RISE with SAP includes consumption credits for SAP BTP Services, which means you can build your own custom applications or integrate with your existing systems through a broad catalog of available APIs, without a separate upfront platform investment. Independent analyses of SAP BTP have reported strong returns for organizations that use it primarily to extend and integrate their core ERP rather than customize the core system itself, though realized ROI varies significantly by use case, integration scope, and how much of the credit allocation is actually consumed.

SAP Business NetworkStarter Pack

Digital Collaboration with Suppliers and Partners

The Business Network Starter Pack connects your procurement and supply chain processes directly with suppliers and partners on a shared digital network, replacing email- and spreadsheet-based coordination with a structured, trackable exchange of purchase orders, invoices, and delivery data.

Built-in Tools and Services

Automation That Simplifies the Technical Migration

RISE with SAP includes migration tooling built specifically to automate the technical cutover, from data migration to custom code analysis, reducing the manual engineering effort and the risk of errors that come with a fully bespoke migration approach.

Figure 1: Traditional S/4HANA migration compared to the RISE with SAP path across contract, infrastructure, and cost structure.

Step by Step: How RISE with SAP Simplifies Your S/4HANA Migration

1. Redesigning and Optimizing Business Processes

Rather than migrating old processes as-is, RISE with SAP uses Business Process Intelligence and SAP’s pre-built best practices to redesign processes during the move. This is usually where the most durable value comes from, since a faster copy of an inefficient process is still an inefficient process.

2. Automating the Technical Migration and Reducing Risk

Built-in migration tools handle much of the technical heavy lifting, including custom code checks and data conversion, that traditionally required extensive manual effort and carried real project risk. Automating these steps shortens timelines and reduces the chance of a go-live surprise.

3. Where Total Cost of Ownership(TCO) Can Improve

SAP and several implementation partners cite TCO reductions of up to approximately 20% over five years for RISE with SAP private cloud deployments. Independent analyses on this point vary, so this should be treated as a directional figure to validate against your own environment rather than a guaranteed outcome. Cost remains one of the top concerns organizations raise when evaluating a cloud ERP move, which is why a well-sourced, directional savings estimate is worth more here than a general marketing claim.

Savings on Infrastructure, Management, and LicensingCosts

With infrastructure and platform management bundled into the subscription, organizations avoid the capital expense of maintaining their own data center hardware, and shift much of the day-to-day system management workload to SAP and its managed services partners.

4. Continuous Innovation and Access to Current Technology

Because SAP S/4HANA Cloud is continuously updated, new capabilities, including AI-powered features, arrive as part of the subscription rather than through a separate, multi-year upgrade project. This matters most for capabilities like generative AI, where waiting three years for a major upgrade cycle means falling three years behind on innovation you’re already paying to access.

A Nagarro Success Story: A RISE with SAP Journey

The scenario below reflects patterns Nagarro has seen across real, anonymized client engagements. Individual results vary depending on starting infrastructure, process complexity, and project scope.

The Challenges

A mid-sized manufacturing company was running a heavily customized ECC 6.0 environment approaching its 2027 support deadline. Reporting was slow, month-end close took over two weeks, and IT was spending most of its budget simply keeping the existing system running rather than improving it.

The Solution: Nagarro and RISE with SAP

Nagarro assessed the company’s existing processes using Business Process Intelligence, identified which customizations were still delivering value and which had simply accumulated over time, and planned a phased migration to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, private edition, under a single RISE with SAP contract.

The Results (Illustrative)

Following the migration, the company reported a meaningful reduction in infrastructure and licensing costs, alongside a significantly faster month-end close. As with any transformation project, actual results depend on the starting environment, scope, and organizational readiness, and are not guaranteed to repeat in every case.

Frequently Asked Questions About RISE with SAP and S/4HANA Migration

How is the cost of RISE with SAP determined?

Pricing depends on your chosen deployment (public or private cloud), the number of users, and the scope of business process and integration requirements. A detailed assessment of your current landscape is typically the fastest way to get an accurate estimate rather than relying on general benchmarks.

What happens to our existing licenses?

Existing on-premise licenses are typically factored into the RISE with SAP contract through SAP’s conversion programs, which can reduce net new costs. The specifics depend on your current contracts and entitlements, which is why a review with a dedicated target=”_blank”>SAP Licensing Services team is usually one of the first steps in a RISE with SAP project.

How long does a migration project typically take?

Timelines vary significantly with scope and migration approach (greenfield, brownfield, or a hybrid “bluefield” strategy), but most mid-sized RISE with SAP projects run from several months to around two years from kickoff to go-live. The biggest swing factors are usually landscape complexity, the state of your existing data quality, how much custom code needs to be assessed or remediated, and how broad the integration scope is with third-party or legacy systems.

Is RISE with SAP a good fit for SMBs?

RISE with SAP is generally aimed at mid-sized to large enterprises with more complex processes. Smaller businesses looking for a faster, more standardized cloud ERP path are usually better served by GROW with SAP, which is built specifically for that segment.

What’s the core difference between on-premise S/4HANA and RISE with SAP?

On-premise S/4HANA means you own and manage the infrastructure, licenses, and upgrades separately, typically through a hyperscaler or your own data center. RISE with SAP bundles the software, infrastructure, and managed services into a single subscription and contract, shifting day-to-day infrastructure management to SAP.

Ready to Start Your Transformation Journey

The 2027 deadline is close, but your migration path doesn’t have to be a scramble. RISE with SAP gives you a structured, single-contract way to move to S/4HANA while redesigning the processes that matter most to your business.

Talk to Our Experts for a Free RISE with SAP Readiness Assessment

Nagarro’s SAP consultants can assess your current landscape, map out a realistic migration timeline, and show you where RISE with SAP delivers the fastest return for your specific environment.

Request your free RISE with SAP readiness assessment and get a clear, no-obligation view of what your migration could look like.

References

• SAP, “What Is RISE with SAP?”
• SAP Help Portal, RISE with SAP Private Cloud Edition documentation
• SAP Community, Maintenance Timelines for SAP ERP 6.0
• Gartner estimate on SAP migration progress, as reported by, The Register
• Cloud4C, Business Transformation with RISE with SAP: Key Advantages
• SAP, SAP Roadmap Explorer