smartShift Enables SAP’s ERP Private Edition Transition Option

SAP has announced a new SAP ERP, Private Edition, Transition Option (https://news.sap.com/2025/02/sap-erp-private-edition-transition-option-navigate-complex-rise-with-sap-transformations/) underscoring its commitment to delivering flexible pathways to SAP-managed cloud. As a trusted partner in the SAP ecosystem, smartShift fully supports this strategy and uniquely helps enterprises accelerate their transition while ensuring security, compliance, and efficiency.

SAP’s early announcement gives customers a great opportunity to start preparing ECC systems now. Critical transformation steps for Code Decommissioning, HANA migration, and Unicode conversion are required to move to SAP-managed cloud. These can be performed starting today, with a step-wise approach, rather than facing all the complexity at once, to streamline Cloud and later S/4HANA migrations. There is no reason to delay!

Custom Code Analysis: The Place to Start

The first step in your journey to SAP-managed cloud is to understand your current system state through data-driven custom code analysis. smartShift Code Analysis extracts and analyzes your legacy code and delivers an in-depth understanding of your codebase. Insights provided show what is required for modernization for SAP managed Cloud, HANA, Unicode, & S/4HANA, and feasibility to improve operational stability, eliminate technical debt and unnecessary code, significantly improve performance, close security gaps, and align code to modern standards.

Proven Expertise in HANA & Unicode Migrations

SAP’s announcement makes it clear: SAP HANA is the only supported database, meaning HANA DB and Unicode migration is a mandatory step for all ECC systems migrating to SAP-managed cloud. smartShift has successfully modernized 100s of customers' systems and billions of lines of ABAP code for HANA DB, ensuring seamless transitions and guaranteed outcomes with our patented, automated approach. 

For customers starting from a non-Unicode system, Unicode conversion is necessary when moving to HANA and SAP managed cloud. smartShift’s automated solutions, proven and hardened over more than 15 years, provide fast, risk-free transition of custom code to Unicode.

A few of our typical success stories include:

• A top-5 telecommunications company that leveraged smartShift for a streamlined HANA migration (Read More).
• Gebr. Heinemann, which utilized smartShift to prepare their custom applications for HANA (Read More).

Importance of resolving all issues

Manual, labor-constrained approaches to code transformation attempt to limit scope based on arbitrary issue priority because they simply cannot solve the entire problem that SAP customers face. Typically, the goal is to merely achieve the project finish line, ignoring and adding technical debt, instead of preparing you for the long term. We believe this is malpractice. Moreover, automation means ranking and scoping by issue severity is antiquated and unnecessary. smartShift’s automated solutions guarantee that all target state compatibility issues are resolved and, critically, address other issues to eliminate risk and prepare you for the future.

Resolving only high-priority issues is insufficient for remediating custom code. All issues need to be addressed to ensure a smooth and efficient transition. For instance, when an implementation partner only fixed Priority 1 and 2 issues for HANA compliance, it led to incorrect financial reporting and an emergency project. smartShift resolved all issues within weeks, restoring accurate reporting and performant code on HANA.

In another case, a single custom object statement caused a severe performance issue, resulting in production downtime and significant financial loss. smartShift's proactive approach could have prevented this, saving the company millions of dollars.

Automating Security for Custom Code

SAP’s announcement highlights the importance of supporting business continuity with security patches. Ensuring that custom code remains secure and up to date is critical for operational integrity and a smooth transition to SAP’s managed cloud.

smartShift automates security compliance for custom code, identifying vulnerabilities and applying necessary remediations with a unique approach that avoids business disruption. Our automated transformations detect and fix security risks at scale, ensuring that enterprises stay protected against evolving threats. Learn more about how smartShift enhances custom code security: smartShift SAP Code Security.

Automating Code Decommissioning

smartShift Intelligent Automation can identify and decommission unused custom code, streamlining system landscapes and eliminating technical debt. SAP considers elimination of unused code a key metric of system health. By reducing complexity and optimizing performance with smartShift, organizations can move to SAP’s managed cloud with greater efficiency, lower costs, and improved system reliability. 

A Long-Term Partner for Your SAP Journey

For enterprises planning to leverage SAP’s ERP Private Edition Transition Option, smartShift can be your automation partner now—getting your ECC on-prem system ready for migration to SAP-managed cloud—and continue providing the same level of service when you move to S/4HANA in the future.

smartShift’s automated solutions ensure a risk-free, cost-effective, and accelerated transition for SAP customers. Contact us today to learn how we can support your journey to SAP’s managed cloud and beyond.

Get started with a Free Rapid Code Analysis to understand your custom code landscape and plan your transition effectively.