Technical Readiness Checklist: SAP HANA, Java, and Infrastructure for the Transition Option
Considering SAP’s plan to phase out ECC by 2030, technical teams need a clear SAP ECC to HANA readiness checklist. This article serves as that checklist, outlining the technical prerequisites and steps required for the ECC Transition Option.
We’ll cover mandatory platform changes (such as the move to HANA), retiring unsupported technologies (like outdated Java and middleware), addressing infrastructure gaps, and provide a year-by-year timeline to keep your organization on track.
Read our comprehensive guide to the SAP Transitioning option.
Why Technical Readiness Matters for the Transition Option
Technical readiness is mission-critical for enterprises considering SAP’s ECC Transition Option. SAP sets strict eligibility criteria for any ECC system to remain supported under this program.
Missing a prerequisite can result in disqualification or lead to skyrocketing late-stage migration costs. In contrast, a well-prepared IT landscape gives your business a competitive edge.
If you meet all technical requirements early, you ensure a smooth transition and strengthen your position in any cost or licensing negotiations with SAP.
Think of the Transition Option as an eligibility audit of your ECC environment.
If your system isn’t up to par — say it’s on the wrong database or running outdated components — SAP can reject your enrollment or mandate expensive last-minute fixes. This poses a threat to business continuity and erodes your bargaining power.
Conversely, by proactively fulfilling every prerequisite, you avoid surprises and emergency expenditures. IT readiness becomes a strategic asset, preserving continuity, reducing risk, and underpinning all cost-benefit and licensing decisions surrounding the Transition Option.
Read Beyond 2033: Strategic Roadmap from ECC Transition Option to Full Cloud ERP Adoption.
Mandatory Platform Changes
First and foremost, migrating your ECC system to the SAP HANA database is mandatory. By 2030, any ECC system entering the Transition Option must run on HANA. If you’re currently on Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, or another database, you must plan a database migration to HANA as part of your readiness checklist.
These SAP HANA migration requirements encompass not only data migration, but also ensuring that your ECC application version is compatible with HANA and that your infrastructure can support an in-memory database.
Another critical prerequisite is system size eligibility.
SAP has identified a threshold of ~2 TB as a key criterion for the Transition Option.
Very large ECC databases may require special optimization or archiving to meet the qualification requirements. For example, one company found its ECC database to be 2.3 TB in size and was ineligible until it archived data to bring the size under 2 TB.
The lesson is clear: perform a system size check early. If you’re near or above 2 TB, take action (such as data archiving or purging) to reduce your footprint well before the deadline.
Platform changes can also include ensuring your ECC software release is on a version supported by HANA. If you are running an older ECC or NetWeaver version, you may need to upgrade to a HANA-compatible release as part of the migration. These mandatory changes are significant projects, so build them into your readiness timeline early.
Read about Evaluating the Financial Impact of the ECC Transition Option.
Unsupported Technologies
Technical readiness involves identifying and eliminating unsupported technologies in your landscape. SAP will not tolerate legacy components that jeopardize stability in the 2030–2033 window.
One example is Java compatibility: if any part of your ECC environment runs on an outdated Java version (e.g., an old SAP Java application server or add-on), it must be updated.
The Transition Option won’t support antiquated Java stacks. The remedy is to upgrade your Java platforms to supported versions (which likely means moving to a newer Java release and ensuring your SAP NetWeaver Java components are up to date).
All custom Java code or third-party tools should also be tested against the newer Java runtime to ensure compatibility.
Similarly, scrutinize legacy middleware and integrations. Many enterprises have older middleware connecting ECC to other systems, such as an aged SAP PI/PO instance, a third-party ETL tool, or custom scripts that directly query the ECC database.
These can break on HANA if they rely on deprecated technology or database-specific logic. For instance, a custom interface with Oracle-specific SQL will fail after migrating to HANA.
The solution is to modernize or replace such integrations well in advance. Upgrade your SAP middleware to the latest version (or consider migrating to cloud integration services), and ensure that third-party connectors are certified for HANA. In some cases, you may need to redesign interfaces to use standard APIs or IDocs instead of direct DB access.
In short, inventory all third-party apps, custom solutions, and obsolete components in your ECC ecosystem. Identify anything running on out-of-support tech (old Java versions, unsupported APIs, legacy OS platforms) and plan to upgrade or retire them now.
This guarantees compliance with SAP’s criteria and reduces the risk of critical failures during the transition.
Infrastructure Gaps to Address
Technical readiness isn’t just about software — your infrastructure must support ECC on HANA. One key area is hardware sizing. Running ECC on SAP HANA is resource-intensive (in-memory database).
You need to ensure servers or cloud instances have adequate memory, CPU, and storage I/O for your workload.
Conduct HANA sizing exercises several years in advance to determine if hardware upgrades or data archiving are necessary to reduce system size. The ECC system, which ran fine on Oracle, may require a larger footprint on HANA, so plan capacity accordingly.
Another best practice is setting up a sandbox environment early. Use a sandbox to perform a test migration of ECC to HANA well before the real cutover. This dry run validates how your system behaves on HANA and exposes hidden issues.
Perhaps some custom ABAP queries run slowly without proper HANA indexing, or an interface fails due to a missing driver or a closed firewall port. It’s far better to discover and fix these in a sandbox than during production migration.
For example, one company’s early sandbox test revealed interface incompatibilities with external systems, saving an estimated €2M by avoiding go-live disruptions.
Finally, conduct a thorough environment validation. Check that every component meets SAP’s standards for running ECC on HANA. Are you on a supported operating system (note: HANA requires Linux)? Is your backup/restore and disaster recovery setup updated for HANA? Verify network and firewall configurations, connectivity for any cloud integration, and high-availability provisions.
Ensure your storage and performance parameters align with SAP HANA best practices. Performing this validation at least a year in advance allows time to address any gaps (e.g., upgrading an OS, increasing network bandwidth), ensuring the actual migration weekend is as uneventful as possible from an infrastructure standpoint.
Step-by-Step Readiness Timeline
A phased timeline is crucial for managing these tasks without overwhelming your team. Below is a year-by-year readiness plan leading up to the Transition Option go-live.
It breaks the journey into manageable stages so nothing is left to the last minute:
| Timeline | Key Tasks | Risks if Missed |
|---|---|---|
| Year -3 (3+ years before transition) | Conduct sizing analysis for HANA<br/>Perform baseline system/license audit (LAW/SAM)<br/>Inventory all integrations | Potential ineligibility; too late to fix sizing or licensing issues |
| Year -2 (2 years before) | Upgrade unsupported components (Java, middleware)<br/>Execute data archiving if needed<br/>Run a sandbox test migration | Undiscovered compatibility issues causing project delays |
| Year -1 (1 year before) | Validate system size (meet ~2 TB limit)<br/>Complete infrastructure readiness checks<br/>Do final sandbox/mock migrations | Last-minute surprises leading to migration delays or extra costs |
| Year 0 (Transition year) | Execute the production ECC migration to HANA<br/>Perform thorough post-migration validation | Extended downtime or transition failure if any critical issue was overlooked |
Following this timeline ensures that by the time you reach the transition year, all prerequisites have been systematically addressed.
By tackling sizing and audits early (Year -3), upgrading and testing in the middle (Year -2), and final validations in the year before (Year -1), you transform Year 0 into a well-rehearsed execution rather than a risky leap. Spreading the work across years greatly reduces project risk and builds confidence for all stakeholders.
Example Scenario — Technical Readiness Saves €5M
Consider a simulated case of a company that began technical readiness preparations two years before the 2030 deadline.
Early on, their team discovered a critical Java incompatibility: an old Java-based module in ECC that wouldn’t be supported after 2027. Because they caught it in time, they upgraded that component well before the transition, avoiding a last-minute scramble.
They also performed an interface audit and identified a middleware gap – a legacy integration to a warehouse system that utilized outdated database calls. The team proactively rebuilt this integration using a modern interface that is compatible with HANA.
Another focus was data size. The company’s ECC database was approximately 2.3 TB in size on its legacy platform. Knowing the Transition Option’s implicit size criteria, they initiated a data archiving project.
Over the next year, they purged obsolete transactional data and migrated historical records to an archive, successfully reducing the production database size to under 2 TB after moving it to HANA. This ensured they met the eligibility threshold and also improved system performance.
Thanks to these actions, when the actual transition occurred, there were no surprises. The migration finished within the planned downtime window.
By avoiding emergency fixes and preventing extended downtime, this company saved an estimated €5M in potential remediation costs and business interruption losses.
The example demonstrates how investing in technical readiness well in advance pays off in tangible financial and operational benefits.
ECC Technical Readiness Checklist
☐ Validate ECC system size (keep the database at or below the ~2 TB eligibility threshold).
☐ Plan ECC migration to SAP HANA by 2030 (set the project in motion well before the deadline).
☐ Upgrade unsupported Java versions (eliminate any outdated Java components in the landscape).
☐ Remediate or replace legacy middleware/integrations that are not certified for HANA.
☐ Establish a sandbox environment to test the ECC-to-HANA migration and interfaces.
☐ Run full infrastructure checks – OS, network, high availability, backups – to ensure the environment meets SAP’s standards.
☐ Build a readiness timeline with annual milestones and monitor progress closely.
5 Recommendations for Technical Leaders
- Start readiness at least 3 years in advance: A multi-year head start gives you time to handle surprises and spread out the work (and budget) over several phases.
- Treat Java and middleware upgrades as the critical path: If outdated Java components or integrations fail, they can derail the whole project. Prioritize fixing these early.
- Downsize and optimize the database early: Use archiving and cleanup to get your ECC database under the 2 TB threshold well ahead of time. A leaner database means a faster, smoother HANA migration with lower infrastructure costs.
- Leverage sandbox test migrations: Identify and resolve issues in a sandbox environment before they impact production. Every problem found in a test run is one less issue during the real migration.
- Tie technical readiness to negotiation strategy: If you’re fully prepared technically, you have options. This gives you leverage in licensing or subscription negotiations with SAP (or even evaluating third-party support), rather than being forced into a corner by deadlines.
FAQ
Q: What are the eligibility criteria for the ECC Transition Option?
A: Key criteria include migrating ECC to SAP HANA by the end of 2030, staying within SAP’s system size threshold (around 2 TB of data), and eliminating any unsupported technologies. In practice, your ECC should be on a modern version (e.g., the latest enhancement pack on ECC 6.0, running on HANA) and free of components that SAP won’t support after 2030 (such as obsolete Java versions or legacy add-ons). Essentially, the system must be up-to-date, on HANA, and using only supported software to qualify.
Q: Why does SAP require migration to HANA by 2030?
A: SAP wants all ECC systems in the Transition Option on a single, future-proof platform. By enforcing HANA, SAP ensures it can support these systems with necessary patches and updates during 2031–2033. It also lays the groundwork for your eventual move to S/4HANA, since HANA is a prerequisite for that. In short, requiring HANA by 2030 establishes a common modern foundation for everyone, making the final transition to S/4HANA smoother and more fully supported.
Q: How does system size impact ECC transition readiness?
A: Size affects both the technical effort and eligibility. Technically, a very large ECC database (multi-terabyte) means a more complex migration — you’ll need more downtime, bigger hardware, and careful planning to move that data to HANA. From an eligibility standpoint, SAP’s Transition Option is geared toward large systems, but it has implied a database size of ~2 TB as a key threshold. If your ECC database is much larger than 2 TB, you should reduce it via archiving or data trimming in advance. Otherwise, you risk long migration durations or even being ineligible for the program. Keeping your database size in check helps ensure you can meet SAP’s criteria and handle the migration without excessive downtime.
Q: Which Java versions and middleware are unsupported?
A: As a rule, anything not supported by 2030 will not be allowed. For Java, this means that older Java platforms used in SAP systems (for example, those corresponding to Java 6 or 7) need to be upgraded to newer, supported versions (such as Java 8 or later). For middleware, outdated versions of SAP Process Integration/Process Orchestration or any third-party integration tools that aren’t certified for use with ECC on HANA should be replaced or upgraded. In short, by the time you transition, all your system components — from the OS and database to your application servers and interfaces — must be on versions that SAP still supports in the 2030s.
Q: What timeline should IT leaders follow to ensure readiness?
A: Ideally, follow a phased timeline over several years. For example: Year -3 – assess your current system (perform sizing, identify required upgrades, and plan the project); Year -2 – execute platform upgrades (e.g. Java, middleware, ECC version) and start a sandbox migration to HANA; Year -1 – finalize data clean-up (ensure you meet size criteria), do comprehensive testing in sandbox, and validate infrastructure; Year 0 – carry out the production migration to HANA and enter the Transition Option. This staggered timeline ensures you tackle everything step-by-step and aren’t scrambling at the last minute.
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