SAP PI/PO Support Ends in December 2027: What Nordic Companies Should Do Now
SAP PI/PO mainstream maintenance ends on December 31, 2027. For Nordic companies still relying on PI/PO, the deadline increases cost, risk, and pressure to plan migration early.
TL;DR
SAP PI/PO mainstream maintenance ends on December 31, 2027. Extended maintenance remains available until the end of 2030, but at a higher cost and with limited scope. For companies still relying on PI/PO, waiting increases risk, reduces flexibility, and makes migration harder to plan. SAP Integration Suite is the logical successor, and a structured migration approach can reduce manual effort, improve predictability, and support a smoother transition.
Table of contents
What is changing in 2027?
SAP has confirmed that mainstream maintenance for SAP Process Integration (PI) and SAP Process Orchestration (PO) ends on December 31, 2027, as part of the SAP NetWeaver 7.5 lifecycle. Extended maintenance remains available until the end of 2030, but at a higher cost, with limited scope and no new functional improvements. For organizations that still rely on PI/PO as a core integration layer, this is no longer a distant date. It is a planning deadline.
Why does this matter now?
A PI/PO migration may look like a technical project on paper, but in practice it usually extends much further into the business. A baseline migration can take four to six months when properly planned and executed. Once internal approvals, stakeholder alignment, testing cycles, and third-party coordination are added, the realistic timeline can stretch significantly. The later companies start, the fewer safe migration windows remain before the deadline.
What are the risks of waiting?
Extended maintenance means paying more for a platform that will not evolve. Security and compliance exposure grows as the middleware layer ages. At the same time, experienced PI/PO specialists are leaving the market, making future staffing harder and more expensive.
There is also a wider transformation risk. PI/PO was built as on-premise, server-based middleware. It is not the SAP-recommended integration layer for cloud-native applications such as SAP S/4HANA Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, Ariba, or Concur. If your organization is moving toward a more modern SAP landscape, the integration layer can quickly become the bottleneck that slows the wider transformation down.
Why move to SAP Integration Suite?
SAP’s designated successor to PI/PO is SAP Integration Suite on SAP Business Technology Platform. It provides native connectivity to S/4HANA Cloud, SuccessFactors, Ariba, Concur, and non-SAP systems through REST, OData, and event-based protocols. It also includes Cloud Integration, API Management, Event Mesh, Open Connectors, and access to prebuilt content through SAP Business Accelerator Hub. The migration path is generally simpler than moving to a non-SAP platform, because many interfaces, mappings, and routing patterns can often be migrated rather than rebuilt from scratch.
How does S5 Consulting approach migration?
At S5 Consulting, we use a structured six-phase migration approach for environments with 300 to 700 interfaces. The current migration material positions the typical delivery range at 74 to 94 working days, covering discovery, preparation, analysis, migration, testing, and deployment. Proprietary automation tools are described as handling approximately 70% of the work.
Phase 1 — Discover (7–9 days)
Define the migration roadmap, shape the project plan, and prepare the SAP Integration Suite environment, including key setup elements and connections.
Phase 2 — Prepare (2–4 days)
Establish naming conventions, structure the interface inventory, and review SAP Migration Assessment outputs as part of the assessment and planning work. If the customer has already run the tool, that input can accelerate the phase.
Phase 3 — Explore (16–22 days)
Analyze the assessment results, prepare automated and manual migration scenarios, create generic iFlows, and build the testing approach.
Phase 4 — Realize (15–25 days)
Execute the migration itself. Proprietary automation tools handle approximately 70% of the work, while scenarios requiring redesign or custom logic are handled manually.
Phase 5 — Test (20 days)
Run semi-automated testing using payloads from the existing PI/PO environment to verify that the migrated interfaces behave as expected.
Phase 6 — Deploy (14 days)
Complete go-live, knowledge transfer, training, and post-migration support.
What does the customer need to provide?
Customer responsibilities include access and authorization, firewall and cloud connector configuration, interface scope decisions, business and functional testing, communication with third-party systems, and representative test data where it cannot be extracted automatically.
Why S5 Consulting?
S5 Consulting is an employee-owned Nordic SAP partner with offices in Oslo, Poland, and Sweden. The company focuses on SAP integration, SAP BTP, and S/4HANA, with a migration approach that combines structured delivery and proprietary automation for migration, testing, and deployment.
What is the best first step?
If your organization is still running PI/PO and planning has not started yet, the most practical first step is a discovery workshop. In a focused two-hour session, we analyze the current PI/PO landscape, map interfaces, estimate timeline and complexity, and outline a migration roadmap with an indicative fixed-price quote.
FAQ
When exactly does SAP PI/PO mainstream maintenance end?
SAP PI/PO mainstream maintenance ends on December 31, 2027, as part of the SAP NetWeaver 7.5 lifecycle. Extended maintenance is available until the end of 2030 at additional cost.
Can we keep running PI/PO after 2027?
Technically yes, but without mainstream maintenance you will not receive security patches, bug fixes, or functional updates. That increases operational, security, and compliance risk over time.
What is SAP Integration Suite?
SAP Integration Suite is SAP’s cloud-native integration platform and the designated successor to PI/PO. It includes capabilities such as Cloud Integration, API Management, Event Mesh, and Open Connectors.
Do all interfaces need to be rebuilt from scratch?
No. Many PI/PO integrations can be migrated rather than rebuilt from scratch. The current migration approach is based on a mix of SAP migration tooling, structured analysis, and proprietary accelerators.
How long can a migration take?
A standard migration can take significantly longer, but for environments with 300 to 700 interfaces, the structured approach described here is positioned in the range of 74 to 94 working days.
What is the best first step if we have not started planning yet?
The most practical first step is a discovery workshop. It helps analyze the current PI/PO landscape, map interfaces, estimate timeline and complexity, and outline a migration roadmap before a full project starts.
Artur Latifov
