End of maintenance 2027: what happens now to BPC and BW planning

What ends in late 2027

For the core applications of SAP Business Suite 7, mainstream maintenance ends at the end of 2027 [1]. The same date applies to SAP BW 7.5 as part of SAP NetWeaver 7.5 [2] and to SAP BPC 10.1 on BW 7.5 [3]. If you plan with BPC on this basis, you lose mainstream maintenance for the planning tool and for the system beneath it on the same day.

After that, extended maintenance is available. For Business Suite 7 it runs from the beginning of 2028 to the end of 2030 and costs a surcharge of two percentage points on the maintenance base [1]. For BW 7.5 and BPC 10.1 it is likewise possible until 2030 [2] [3]. For SAP BW/4HANA, SAP has committed to maintenance until at least 2040 [2].

For BPC 2021, the date depends on the BW/4HANA release underneath: on BW/4HANA 2021, maintenance ends at the end of 2027; on BW/4HANA 2023, at the end of 2030 [4] [5]. For later releases, the sources gave no date as of mid-2025. The binding reference for your version is SAP's Product Availability Matrix.

What an end of maintenance means

Nothing is switched off [1]. The system keeps running. What ends is the vendor's service commitment: new corrections and the usual supply of legal changes [1].

For a planning system that produces budgets, forecasts and parts of the financial close, this is a risk with a deadline. An error that occurs after the end of maintenance is your problem. So is a changed regulation.

Three options

1. Buy extended maintenance

This buys time until 2030 and costs the surcharge. The decision itself remains open and comes up again three years later.

2. Move planning to SAP Analytics Cloud

SAP recommends that its customers move to SAP Analytics Cloud for planning and to SAP S/4HANA for Group Reporting for consolidation [3]. Plan and actuals then come from a data foundation shared with the new ERP. This option is a project with a beginning and an end. After that, the 2027 date is no longer an issue for planning.

3. Add a different planning tool alongside

This can also be the right choice, for example if a company already uses another tool. It brings its own integration path, and your financial data is then held in two systems.

Why planning is often the last to move

The decision about planning is usually made as part of the ERP programme. There, accounting, logistics and master data come first. The business department that does the planning is rarely at the table in these meetings. In the end the new platform is in place, and planning gets whatever time is left.

So work out the deadline backwards from the planning calendar. A budget round starts months before the financial year it covers. If the first round is to run in the new system, the model must be finished beforehand, tested, and have run once in parallel with the old one.

What should be clarified before the decision

• Inventory: Which planning processes run in BPC and BW today, in which version, with how many participants?
• Logic: Which calculation rules sit in scripts, and which in Excel files attached to the system?
• Data: Which sources do actuals and master data come from, and who maintains them?
• Scope: Is it only about planning, or about consolidation too? For that, SAP names a different target product [3].
• Operations: Who will manage the solution after the project, the business department or IT?

A migration is also an opportunity to simplify planning. If you rebuild the old logic one to one, you carry its detours along with it. If you map the process first, you see which steps exist today only because of the tool.

What you can do now

Check in SAP's Product Availability Matrix which date applies to your versions. Put the list of your planning processes next to it. Together, the two tell you by when a decision must be made.

What planning in SAP Analytics Cloud looks like is shown on our SAP Analytics Cloud page. If you want to estimate the effort for your case, we start with an inventory.