What is the maintenance strategy

For the core application releases of SAP Business Suite 7 shipped in late 2008,

the maintenance strategy for SAP applications is based on the following rules.

Maintenance phases of the core applications (SAP ERP 6.0, SAP Customer

Relationship Management 7.0, SAP Product Lifecycle Management 7.0, SAP

Supply Chain Management 7.0, and SAP Supplier Relationship Management 7.0)

have the following durations:

•

Seven (7) years of mainstream maintenance

•

T wo (2) years of extended maintenance at an additional fee

•

T hereafter, customer-specific maintenance

Maintenance dates for releases of the SAP NetWeaver technology platform and

its components are aligned with the maintenance dates of the releases of the core

applications.

Maintenance dates for enhancement packages are aligned with the releases of

the software they were delivered to enhance.

Special rules may apply to software component versions.

To summarize, SAP provides maximum flexibility over long time frames to leverage

SAP software releases. This allows you to skip several release upgrades and

plan an upgrade based on business needs. SAP normally supports an upgrade

path for all SAP software releases in the mainstream maintenance and extended

maintenance phases.

For more information on the maintenance strategy, refer to SAP Service Marketplace

at

www.service.sap.com/maintenance. Or you can read SAP’s Release

Strategy for Large Enterprises available at

www.service.sap.com/releasestrategy.

For an overview of the maintenance duration for individual core application

releases, refer to:

•

Maintenance Strategy for SAP Core Applications at

www.service.sap.com/maintenance

•

T he product availability matrix at www.service.sap.com/pam

For information about the two support models SAP offers, SAP Enterprise

Support services and SAP Standard Support services, as well as related

deliverables, please visit SAP Service Marketplace at

www.service.sap.com

/enterprisesupport

and www.service.sap.com/standardsupport respectively.

Please note that different maintenance strategy rules can apply to older releases.