SAP continues to update its offerings to further improve the user experience. While this is great to ensure our ERP systems have the greatest capabilities possible, it can be hard to keep track that our own systems are up to date. That’s why we put together a list of SAP product versions and how you can learn more about your business’s technology stack. 

 ECC vs. S/4HANA 

At the highest level, we can differentiate SAP systems as either ECC or S/4HANA. The main difference between the two is the type of database they use. 

>> ECC stands for ERP Central Component. It is SAP’s legacy system, with roots stretching back to their very first ERP solution in the 1970s. It can operate on any database, including third-party and, more recently, HANA. New versions of ECC are not being released and it is expected that customers will transfer their systems over to S/4HANA.

>S/4HANA is short for SAP Business Suite 4 HANA. As the fourth version of the SAP Business Suite, it is the latest offering from SAP. It runs only on the HANA database, which is an in-memory database developed and tuned by SAP for faster performance and real-time reporting. 

 

Follow posts for more details on S4/HANA versions and innovations.