This piece draws on “Een SAP-migratie hoeft geen jaren meer te duren, maar begin wel nú” (“An SAP migration no longer needs to take years, but do start now”), an article by our co-founder and senior value partner Rad Parvin for Dutch media title IT Executive, published 11 August 2026.
AI compresses the technical work of an SAP S/4HANA migration in three places. It reads the entire custom-code estate and returns a prioritised fix list in days, work that takes a manual review a year or more. It tests the full set of integrations in parallel instead of one interface at a time. And it simulates the cutover on live production data before the real thing. In our own delivery work, using platforms such as Palantir Foundry with AIP, this makes the technical part of a migration up to 70 per cent shorter and cheaper. With SAP ending regular ECC maintenance in 2027, that compression is the difference between hitting the deadline and paying for extended maintenance.
Why has 2027 become a hard deadline for migrating to S/4HANA?
SAP ends regular maintenance on ECC in 2027, yet a sizeable share of enterprises still run on the old platform, partly because that end date has been postponed before. Counting on another postponement is no longer a plan. A classical technical migration to S/4HANA takes 18 to 24 months at any real level of complexity, followed by a stabilisation period, so an organisation starting today with a traditional approach will probably miss the date.
The cost of missing it is well understood. SAP charges a multiple of standard rates for extended maintenance, and the alternative is running a business-critical system without vendor support, security patches or compliance updates.
Why do classical S/4HANA migrations overrun?
They rarely run to schedule, and a 30 per cent overrun is sadly closer to the rule than the exception. Custom code gets reviewed by hand, a task that takes a year or more on a sizeable ABAP estate. Integrations get tested one at a time, so dependencies between systems only become visible at production level. And data-quality problems surface during acceptance testing, the point in the programme where fixing them costs the most.
What does AI change in the migration?
An AI-driven analysis reads the complete custom environment and returns a prioritised fix list within days. Unlike manual review, it also leaves a fully traceable record for audit. The complete set of integrations can be tested in parallel, exposing failures that stay hidden under sequential testing until go-live. And the cutover itself, the moment of the actual switch, can be simulated in advance on live production data, showing which steps overrun, which interfaces fail and which data objects refuse to move.
As Rad Parvin puts it in the original piece, translated from Dutch,
“In our own practice we see the technical part of a migration become up to 70 per cent shorter and cheaper.”
The gain comes mostly from assessing every workflow at the same time. Risks are visible from day one, and problems get fixed whilst they are still cheap to fix.
What stays human work in an S/4HANA migration?
AI accelerates the analysis, the testing and the simulation. The decisions stay with people. Which custom code is retired, which processes are redesigned and how the organisation adapts are questions no algorithm can answer. What the technology buys is time, and with the 2027 deadline in view, time is the scarce resource.
Where does Palantir Foundry with AIP fit?
The approach depends on a platform that can hold the whole migration in one place. Palantir Foundry with AIP ingests and analyses the full custom environment in a single pass, which is what makes the parallel testing and the cutover simulation possible. We use it in our own SAP migration work, and it is where the up-to-70-per-cent figure comes from. The principle matters more than any one platform, though. Tooling that only sees one slice of the estate at a time recreates the sequential bottleneck that makes classical migrations overrun.
Where do you start?
Whether you are planning your migration or already mid-programme, it is always worth getting an independent opinion on how you could accelerate your SAP S/4HANA technical migration. Talk to us about where the months are hiding in yours.
This piece draws on “Een SAP-migratie hoeft geen jaren meer te duren, maar begin wel nú” (“An SAP migration no longer needs to take years, but do start now”), an article by our co-founder and senior value partner Rad Parvin for IT Executive, published 11 August 2026. Read it in full at itexecutive.nl.
FAQs
Can an enterprise still migrate to S/4HANA before the 2027 deadline?
With a classical approach, probably not. A technical migration of any real complexity takes 18 to 24 months plus stabilisation, which already overshoots the remaining runway. With AI-supported analysis, parallel testing and cutover simulation, the technical phase compresses enough to make the deadline reachable, provided the work starts now.
How do Dutch enterprises select an AI transformation partner?
Increasingly on evidence rather than promises. For deadline-driven work like the 2027 ECC cutoff, that means asking a partner to show how it compresses the critical path, what audit trail its approach leaves behind, and whether its fees tie to outcomes rather than day rates. A good partner is also clear about what AI does not do. The decisions on custom code, process redesign and organisational change stay human.
How do organisations get the most value from a Palantir AIP deployment?
By pointing it at work where reading the whole estate at once changes the economics. An SAP S/4HANA migration is a clear example. Foundry with AIP ingests the full custom-code and integration environment in one pass, turning a year of manual review into days of analysis and making parallel testing and cutover simulation possible.
How much faster is an AI-supported SAP migration?
In our own delivery work the technical part of a migration becomes up to 70 per cent shorter and cheaper. The gain comes from assessing all workflows at once rather than in sequence, so risks are visible from day one and get fixed whilst they are still cheap to fix.
