The start of a new year offers opportunities for reflection, goal setting, and focusing on the year ahead. However, for SAPinsiders, there are many priorities that will continue into 2026, and organizations should be prepared for what is to come. Some of these considerations such as, the end of mainstream maintenance of core SAP Business Suite solutions and applications based on SAP NetWeaver, are well known. Others may only have impacted a relatively small proportion of the SAP customer base and will become more widespread this year. No matter where SAPinsiders sit from a product and usage perspective, the following areas should be noted when preparing for the year ahead.

End of Maintenance Preparation and Deadlines

Most SAPinsiders are aware of the upcoming end of mainstream maintenance of SAP ECC and SAP Business Suite for SAP HANA at the end of 2027. What is not as well-known is the fact that any solutions running on SAP NetWeaver will also end mainstream maintenance at the same time. This includes solutions such as SAP Business Warehouse (BW) 7.5 and versions of SAP BW/4HANA earlier than 2023, SAP Solution Manager (SolMan), SAP Business Planning and Consolidation, and the SAP NetWeaver platform itself. For those that are running these solutions, plans should already be in place to either transition to a newer version or replacement offering, especially since the end of 2027 is now less than two years away. However, additional planning is required for solutions like SAP Solution Manager (SolMan) that do not have a like-to-like replacement available. Although SAP Cloud ALM has been positioned as the strategic successor to SAP SolMan, it is a cloud-native offering and may not support legacy Change Request Management and ITSM, highlighting a need to combine with offerings such as SAP Focused Run or even adopting third-party solutions in some areas. From an ERP standpoint, SAPinsider research has shown that the approaching end of 2027 is creating anxiety in the SAP space. Those that are not already underway with a transition to SAP S/4HANA or SAP S/4HANA Cloud are looking to accelerate their deployments and move as quickly as possible even if that means ignoring plans for broader transformation.

Accelerated Adoption of Cloud ERP

Adoption of RISE with SAP was relatively slow for the first three years following its announcement. While small- to medium-sized organizations and new customers often chose GROW with SAP, overall adoption of cloud ERP has been relatively low—just between 10% and 15% of customers surveyed by SAPinsider. However, 2025 saw that adoption accelerate with 43% of respondents to SAPinsider research reporting that they were using, implementing, or actively preparing for an implementation of cloud ERP. This trend is set to continue in 2026. Not only will those that already deployed SAP S/4HANA move to SAP Cloud ERP Private in increasing numbers, more of those that are transitioning from older ERP systems make the move to cloud ERP. This is only emphasized by the strong push that SAP account teams are making around adoption. These factors make it imperative for SAP ERP customers to prepare for a cloud ERP future. The adoption of cloud ERP will continue to accelerate with many organizations already running solutions that make up the SAP Cloud ERP Private (formerly RISE with SAP) package, the support available from SAP in completing a transition, the credits and offers available from SAP to facilitate the move, and the need to access functionality available in SAP S/4HANA Cloud that is not available in existing offerings.

Data and Analytics

While SAP Business Data Cloud (BDC) was announced early in 2025, the real push for adoption will come during 2026. This is for several reasons. First is that many of the features, such as natively accessing SAP Datasphere within SAP BDC, were not available until late in the year. SAP has also recently announced partnerships and support for Snowflake, Databricks, Google BigQuery, and Microsoft Fabric through SAP BDC Connect which will help accelerate adoption. Moreover data is playing a foundational role in the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Capabilities like bi-directional data sharing with SAP HANA Cloud will also provide additional support for organizations that want to maximize the value of their data between SAP Datasphere, solution extensions like SAP Databricks and SAP Snowflake, and SAP Business Suite data products such as SAP S/4HANA, SAP SuccessFactors, sustainability, and customer experience.

New Artificial Intelligence Scenarios

Although SAP has focused on its generative AI assistant Joule as the main use case for generative AI in SAP solutions, Joule is increasingly becoming what SAP sees as the primary interface for accessing applications. While adoption is still relatively low among SAP customers, access to generative AI capabilities like Joule is a major factor influencing the thinking of a significant number of SAPinsiders deciding whether to move to SAP Cloud ERP Private (formerly RISE with SAP). Additionally, during 2026, SAP will be introducing new means for customers to access AI in applications. One of the announcements at SAP Connect 2025 was that the next generation procurement applications, due to be released during the first quarter of 2026, have been rebuilt on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and will be AI-native. SAP plans to take similar steps for other line of business applications in the future, ensuring that AI is not an add-on but a built-in capability. This is also part of SAP’s broader strategy to enhance and move customers to the new cloud-based SAP Business Suite. Since these updated applications will be AI-native, they will introduce new ways of leveraging AI for SAPinsiders. In fact, even users that are not interested in using a generative AI assistant such as Joule will be leveraging new AI scenarios and capabilities in the applications without necessarily realizing that they will be doing so. These changes will continue to make data cleansing and harmonization vital heading into 2026.

Transformation, Innovation, and Governance

With the move away from large, complex projects and a need to support regular updates, extensions, and new capabilities to address changing business needs, SAPinsiders will need the ability to effectively manage these changes and updates. Moving to cloud-based environments provides flexibility, but these ongoing changes need to be managed differently than in the past. This is why SAPinsiders must be ready in 2026 for continuous innovation. First discussed by SAP at Sapphire 2025, SAP’s integrated toolchain for innovation now encompasses SAP Signavio, SAP LeanIX, SAP Cloud ALM, WalkMe, Tricentis and Syniti, SAP BTP and SAP Build, and Joule for Consultants or Developers. These offerings combine to help organizations support the four elements of transformation: business processes, the application landscape, data, and people. To adapt these tools to meet the needs of organizations using AI, SAP has introduced new capabilities such as LeanIX AI Agent Hub and Signavio AI Agent Excellence. These features allow organizations to support and effectively govern AI whether that is from SAP or a third-party. This ensures SAPinsiders that are looking to support transformation, continuous innovation, or AI-related deployments will have the capabilities required to both deploy and govern these scenarios.

Preparing for 2026

Every SAPinsider is at a different point in their journey whether that is to the cloud, transforming their ERP system, or deploying AI. However, at least some of these topics will be relevant to customers in 2026 regardless of what they are doing or the point they have reached in their journey. As organizations look to execute their plans for 2026, it is important they take these topics into account to ensure a greater likelihood of success.