SAP - Penalties for not upgrading?

[VirtualForce]

Funny my first post on MyBroadBand should be non-broadband related...been here a couple of times. Funny how many Google results point here!

Hopefully I'll be blasting you guys with ADSL questions as I plan on getting ADSL soon!!!

Anyway, I have a question I have some of you very knowledgeable ppl might be able to understand.

Been in my new job for just under a month and enjoying it very much. Working at the SAP dept in a company. So...

I have been asked to find out what the cost or penalty would be for not upgading. (Currently on ver 4.7 Enterprise)
Does anybody here work with SAP or know someone that does that could possibly help me? I would appreciate some documentation if possible please.

I have been trawling the net for hours and only found this

ta!

 

[LandyMan]

AFAIK there is no penalty for not upgrading, but the problem comes in when the specific release comes to the end of its support cycle. By then it is pretty much too late to upgrade, as you will get no support whatsoever for that release.

You need to plan an upgrade project to be completed before the support cycle ends.

 

[VirtualForce]

I googled some more and found this site:

which says this:

Users of older SAP applications also face the phaseout of standard support offerings. Support for extended maintenance on SAP R/3 4.6C, for example, is scheduled to expire at the end of 2009. Users of R/3 4.7 will be offered extended maintenance only through March 2010. After that, R/3 4.6C and 4.7 customers that want to remain on those releases and receive support from SAP would be offered individual or customer-specific maintenance deals that, Wang said, are often priced at 23% to 25% of net license fees per year.

 

[VirtualForce]

AFAIK there is no penalty for not upgrading, but the problem comes in when the specific release comes to the end of its support cycle. By then it is pretty much too late to upgrade, as you will get no support whatsoever for that release.

You need to plan an upgrade project to be completed before the support cycle ends.

I have spoken to my boss and they apparently have finshed the upgrade, they need to now do the roll over and then all do the opgrade of the quality and dev servers....thats the costs thats bothering them.

Thanks for you help tho!!

 

[LandyMan]

I have spoken to my boss and they apparently have finshed the upgrade, they need to now do the roll over and then all do the opgrade of the quality and dev servers....thats the costs thats bothering them.

Thanks for you help tho!!

Now I am confused? Finished the upgrade from which release to which release? Also, you will (should) never upgrade a production environment and then Dev and QA, that just doesn't make sense. So your post is very confusing?!

And which costs are they concerned about? Licensing/consulting/maintenance.

If you don't want to give more info on the open forum, PM me

 

[VirtualForce]

lol, I apologize... I should have explained more. This also boggled my mind and asked my boss about this aswell.

They have used part of the developement server to do the upgrade and test the system, like all user exits for example.

The cost is for a SAP consultant and what not to do the upgrade. According to the consultant, for a medium sized company, the cost for upgrading can be in the region of R2 million (From the very first call for help to the bitter end after all bugs have been doomed) but my company only have R250000 for the upgrade itself.
So they have hired a consultant to help with the upgrade and problem solving on the dev server which swallowed a huge amount of the R250000.

Final transfer of the new ECC 6 to the production (actual working server) will take place over a weekend and personel in the various depts will be there to check their specific programs. Inhouse programmers will be tasked to try and solve all problems before outside help is paid for.

Hope this clears is up.

PS. I am very new in the SAP business. I was lucky to get this position as Help Desk support and misc SAP duties with no experience. I just hope I can scale the learning curve! I really want to end up doing so much more than simple help desk support.