June 2026
Every few weeks, I sit across from a CIO or CFO who asks me the same question in different ways: “How do we get to S/4HANA Public Cloud without derailing the business?”
It’s a fair question – and one that deserves a direct, honest answer rather than a rehearsed partner pitch. So let me share what we see on the ground, what SAP has been putting out in 2026, and what I genuinely believe every business leader needs to understand before they take the first step.
Why This Conversation Is Urgent – Right Now
Let me start with the non-negotiable: SAP ECC mainstream support ends on 31 December 2027. Extended maintenance runs to 2030, but after that, security patches, updates, and technical support are gone. With the typical S/4HANA migration taking 12 to 24 months, organisations that haven’t started planning are already in a tight window.
Here’s what makes 2026 different from previous years: the capability gap between organisations on S/4HANA Public Cloud and those still on ECC is widening at a pace we’ve never seen before. SAP’s Q1 2026 Business AI release alone delivered over 30 specialised Joule AI agents and more than 2,500 Joule Skills embedded directly into S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition – from a Dispute Resolution Agent that automates root-cause analysis on invoice disputes, to AI-assisted sales order creation from unstructured PDFs, to a Project Setup Agent that accelerates project launches by pulling from historical data.
Every quarter you delay is a quarter your competitors absorb these capabilities and you don’t.
The Three Paths to SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud
There is no single road to S/4HANA Public Cloud. Understanding which path fits your organisation is the most critical decision you’ll make – and getting it wrong is expensive. Here’s how we think about each one at Truspeq.
Path 1: Greenfield – The Clean Slate
What it is: A fresh implementation of S/4HANA Public Cloud, built on SAP Best Practices, with no migration of legacy code or historical customisations.
Who it’s for: Organisations that are ready to reimagine their processes, reduce technical debt, and adopt SAP’s standard – and who understand that SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is always a greenfield implementation. SAP does not allow the migration of legacy custom ECC code into the Public Cloud environment.
What SAP says: Through the GROW with SAP programme, SAP has created a standardised, rapid pathway to Public Cloud. The fit-to-standard approach means your implementation is guided by SAP’s preconfigured best-practice business processes, available through the SAP Signavio Process Navigator. This is not a blank-sheet exercise – it’s disciplined adoption of what SAP has already proven works.
The honest trade-off: You will need to redesign processes and manage change at scale. Your customisations don’t come with you. But what you gain – continuous quarterly innovation updates, Joule AI baked in at no extra licence cost, and clean core architecture – is substantial.
What we see at Truspeq: Greenfield is the most powerful long-term move, but it demands strong executive sponsorship and a clear change management strategy. Organisations that go in expecting a “lift and shift” come unstuck. Those that approach it as a transformation – not a migration – succeed.
Path 2: Brownfield (System Conversion) – Preserving What You’ve Built
What it is: Converting your existing SAP ECC system to S/4HANA, retaining historical data, configurations, and to the extent possible, your process landscape.
Who it’s for: Organisations with well-maintained ECC systems, significant historical data requirements, and limited appetite for large-scale process disruption. The brownfield approach is the most common path for existing ECC users and is typically used for Private Cloud rather than Public Cloud — though it remains highly relevant for organisations taking a phased approach, such as moving first to Private Cloud on RISE with SAP before transitioning to Public Cloud.
The honest trade-off: You carry existing complexity forward. Custom code must be assessed, refactored, or retired. SAP’s Custom Code Migration Advisor – now AI-assisted in 2025/2026 – helps identify and resolve dependencies, but it’s not a silver bullet. Organisations with heavily customised ECC landscapes often find that the effort to “clean” the system is substantial.
What we see at Truspeq: Brownfield gets you to S/4HANA faster if you’re coming from a relatively standard ECC base. But we consistently advise clients to treat the conversion as a forcing function – use it to simplify, not to replicate the old world in a new container.
A note on Compatibility Packs: SAP extended the usage rights for S/4HANA Compatibility Packs to the end of May 2026 as a final transition window. If your organisation has been relying on these packs to bridge classic ERP functions, that runway is now effectively closed. This makes the path forward a more immediate decision than many teams realise.
Path 3: Selective Data Transition (Bluefield / Hybrid) – The Best of Both
What it is: A selective approach where you migrate specific business processes, data sets, and organisational units – rather than everything at once. Sometimes called “Bluefield” or hybrid, this path picks what to bring forward and what to leave behind.
Who it’s for: Organisations undergoing structural change – mergers, divestments, carve-outs – or those with highly complex landscapes where a full greenfield or full brownfield isn’t viable. It’s also the right path for multi-system landscapes where different entities have different readiness levels.
What SAP enables: SAP’s Landscape Transformation capabilities, combined with the SAP Activate methodology and tools like SAP Signavio for process discovery, give this approach a structured framework. The combination of fit-to-standard alignment and selective data migration tools allows organisations to move with precision rather than wholesale.
The honest trade-off: This is the most complex of the three paths from a programme management perspective. It demands robust data governance, careful scope definition, and strong testing rigour. The risk of scope creep is real.
What we see at Truspeq: This path is underused and often misunderstood. When scoped and executed properly, it can deliver remarkable results — particularly for organisations facing separation deadlines or those managing a two-tier ERP landscape. We’ve seen organisations use SAP Activate, fit-to-standard alignment, and purpose-built accelerators to achieve clean Public Cloud go-lives in dramatically compressed timeframes when the circumstances demand it.
What SAP Delivered in Q1 2026 – And Why It Changes the Calculus
I want to be specific about this because I see too much commentary that’s months behind the actual product.
SAP’s Q1 2026 Business AI release, published in April 2026 on the SAP News Center, represents a material shift in what S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition is capable of – and by extension, what your competitors on the platform are doing today.
Here’s what’s now generally available or in beta for S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition users:
- Joule is now live across 35 SAP solutions – embedded in the workflows your teams use every day, not as a separate tool but as a native capability.
- AI-assisted smart home page personalisation – users describe what they need in natural language and the system surfaces the right application with a single click, reducing personalisation costs by 33%.
- AI-assisted error explanation – cryptic system errors are translated into plain-language guidance with resolution recommendations, reducing error resolution time by 5%.
- AI-assisted sales order creation from unstructured data – PDFs and image-based purchase orders are automatically extracted and proposed as sales order data, eliminating manual entry and reducing errors.
- AI-assisted payment advice processing – payment amounts, references, and currencies extracted from invoices across multiple languages, with self-learning accuracy. SAP reports a 70% reduction in document processing time, 83% less template maintenance time, and 40% reduction in value loss from processing delays.
- Dispute Resolution Agent (beta) – scans invoices, sales orders, deliveries, pricing agreements, and tax rules to identify discrepancy sources and recommend compliant resolutions.
- AI-assisted input recommendations for returns order creation – historical data used to suggest the most common input values and return reasons, minimising manual entry.
And at Joule level, the Agent Builder is now generally available – meaning your organisation can build custom agents, not just consume SAP’s pre-built ones. The Joule for Consultants capability now includes SAP Enterprise Architecture Reference Library data, enhanced citation visibility, and the ability for consultants to upload up to 10 documents directly into a conversation for context-aware guidance.
The generative AI hub in SAP’s AI Foundation also now offers access to OpenAI GPT 5.2, Gemini 3.0 Pro, and Anthropic Claude Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6.
My point is this: the S/4HANA Public Cloud platform you’re migrating to in 2026 is not the platform it was 18 months ago. The business case has strengthened materially.
What Sapphire 2026 Confirmed
For organisations still in the planning phase, SAP Sapphire 2026 provided important clarity. The consensus from the announcements is unambiguous: organisations that delay their move to S/4HANA Cloud are accumulating a widening capability gap as SAP’s Autonomous Suite matures. AI-assisted migration tools are more mature than they’ve ever been. The partner ecosystem has accelerators. The business case now reflects compounding opportunity cost, not just licence risk.
Joule Studio 2.0, announced at Sapphire 2026, further extends development productivity – with a Visual Studio Code extension and a CLI tool bringing AI-guided development directly into the environments your technical teams already use.
What This Means for Your Organisation
I want to leave you with the questions we ask every leadership team we work with at Truspeq:
- What is your 2027 exposure? If you’re on ECC and haven’t mapped your dependency on mainstream support, start there. The clock is running.
- Which path fits your complexity profile? Greenfield if you’re ready to transform. Brownfield if you’re preserving a well-maintained core. Selective if you’re navigating structural complexity. Don’t let your ERP vendor or your incumbent SI default you into a path – make it a deliberate decision.
- Are you thinking about AI readiness as part of the migration conversation? The organisations doing this well aren’t treating AI as a future-state consideration. They’re designing their S/4HANA architecture to absorb Joule agents and Business AI capabilities from day one.
- Have you secured your implementation partner? This is not a theoretical concern. Skilled SAP delivery capacity is tightening. Organisations that delay securing their implementation partner risk stalling their transformation at precisely the moment when geopolitical disruptions and compliance requirements demand agility.
A Final Word
At Truspeq, we don’t sell a single migration path. We help organisations find the right one – and then execute it well. The three paths I’ve described are not a menu to pick from casually. Each carries real trade-offs, real timelines, and real organisational implications.
What I can tell you with confidence is that the window for careful, well-planned migration is narrowing. The platform has never been more capable. And the organisations that move with clarity and conviction now will be in a fundamentally different position by 2027.
If you’d like to have that conversation – without the pitch – Truspeq team is always available.
For the latest SAP S/4HANA Public Cloud updates and release highlights, visit news.sap.com and the SAP Discovery Center.