Lesson 4 of 5
From R/3 and ECC to S/4HANA
7 min
You will hear people at work talk about "R/3," "ECC" and "S/4." They are generations of the same idea: SAP’s integrated ERP. Knowing the family tree helps you understand why some screens look old, why your company might be in the middle of a migration project, and why some familiar transactions have changed.
- 1972SAP foundedFive former IBM employees start the company in Germany to build standard business software.
- 1979SAP R/2Integrated business software for mainframe computers.
- 1992SAP R/3Client-server ERP that runs on many databases and spreads SAP to thousands of companies.
- Mid-2000sSAP ERP 6.0 (ECC 6.0)The release most long-standing customers still run, part of SAP Business Suite 7.
- 2010–2011SAP HANASAP’s own in-memory database is introduced.
- Feb 2015SAP S/4HANAA new ERP generation built only for SAP HANA, launched in New York.
- 2020Maintenance dates setSAP announces ECC mainstream maintenance to end of 2027, optional extended maintenance to end of 2030, and S/4HANA support to at least 2040.
R/3 and ECC
R/3 made SAP the default ERP for large companies in the 1990s. Its successor, SAP ERP Central Component (ECC), kept the same basic design. Many companies have run ECC for 15 years or more and customized it heavily. ECC can run on several databases (Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM Db2 and others), so it was designed around the limits of those databases.
One of those limits shaped how ECC stores data. Reading millions of individual line items was slow, so ECC kept many totals tables and index tables: pre-calculated sums that reports read instead of adding up the detail. Each posting updated the detail and several totals at the same time. That worked, but it meant the same fact was stored in several places, and those places could fall out of step.
What changed with S/4HANA
SAP S/4HANA (the "S" for simple, the "4" for the fourth generation) runs only on SAP HANA, an in-memory database fast enough to total line items on the fly. That let SAP remove many of the old totals tables and merge others. In finance, the general ledger, asset accounting, controlling and material ledger postings now land in one line-item table known as the Universal Journal. You will learn more about this in the next course.
| Topic | SAP ECC 6.0 | SAP S/4HANA |
|---|---|---|
| Database | Several third-party databases | SAP HANA only |
| Finance data | Separate ledgers and totals tables for finance and controlling | One Universal Journal of line items |
| Customers and suppliers | Separate customer and vendor masters | Business partner as the single entry point |
| User experience | SAP GUI transactions | SAP Fiori apps, with SAP GUI still available on-premise and in Private Edition |
| Deployment | Mostly on-premise | On-premise, Cloud Private Edition or Cloud Public Edition |
| Maintenance | Mainstream ends 2027; optional extended to 2030 | Supported to at least 2040 under SAP’s current commitments |
ECC and S/4HANA at a glance
Some changes are visible to every user. Customers and suppliers are now maintained as business partners using a single transaction, BP, instead of the separate customer and vendor transactions of ECC. Older goods movement transactions were replaced by MIGO. Many tasks also have a Fiori app that works in a browser. If your company is moving from ECC, expect some familiar codes to redirect you or stop working.
Why it matters to you
For business users, the move from ECC to S/4HANA is not just a technical upgrade. Data is stored differently, some processes are simplified, some reports are replaced, and the screens may change. Every one of those differences has to be checked by people who know what the right result looks like. Migration projects are among the most test-heavy events in a company’s life with SAP.
What would you do?
Contoso is moving from ECC to S/4HANA. A long-time accounts payable clerk says: "I’ll just keep using FK01 to create suppliers like I always have." What is the best advice?
- SAP’s ERP generations run R/2, R/3, ECC and S/4HANA.
- S/4HANA runs only on SAP HANA, which let SAP remove many totals tables and simplify the data model.
- Visible changes include the Universal Journal, business partner (BP) and Fiori apps.
- ECC mainstream maintenance ends in 2027 (optional extended to 2030), which drives many migrations.
Check your understanding · not graded
Lesson check
1. Which database does SAP S/4HANA run on?
2. What is the Universal Journal?
3. In S/4HANA, how are customers and suppliers created?