Both products are very similar in terms of lines of business, coverage, and functionality. S/4 HANA is offered on two different platforms: On-Premise or Cloud. 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. As the fourth version of the SAP Business Suite, it is the latest offering from SAP. S/4HANA is short for SAP Business Suite 4 HANA. New versions of ECC are not being released and it is expected that customers will transfer their systems over to S/4HANA. It can operate on any database, including third-party and, more recently, HANA. It is SAP’s legacy system, with roots stretching back to their very first ERP solution in the 1970s. The main difference between the two is the type of database they use.ĮCC stands for ERP Central Component. S/4HANAĪt the highest level, we can differentiate SAP systems as either ECC or S/4HANA. 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 the SAP versions and how your business can learn more about which version you are operating. SAP continues to update their offerings to further improve the user experience.
