SAP ECC 6.0 (EHP 0–5)

Overview

SAP ERP Central Component (ECC) 6.0 is the core application of SAP Business Suite 7 and, for the better part of two decades, the operational backbone for thousands of organisations worldwide — running finance and controlling, materials management, sales and distribution, production planning, plant maintenance and human resources on a single, deeply integrated ABAP platform. Enhancement packages 0 through 5 represent the older feature levels of ECC 6.0, deployed broadly from 2006 through the early 2010s before the EHP6–8 levels appeared. They remain functionally mature and heavily customised in many landscapes, but they sit on the classic, pre-HANA data model and are the furthest behind SAP's current support commitments, which is exactly what makes them a priority to address.

It became generally available on 6 June 2006. SAP mainstream maintenance ended 31 December 2025 — the point after which SAP stops delivering new patches, legal and regulatory updates, and support packages for the release. Crucially, SAP offers no extended-maintenance phase for this release, so the mainstream date is a hard cut-off rather than the start of a paid extension — there is no buying of extra time at the version level. Systems still on this release are now running without standard SAP support, which is a security, compliance and audit exposure that should be closed quickly.

The strategic successor is SAP S/4HANA, SAP's HANA-based next-generation ERP. In practice, customers on these older levels cannot leap straight to a supported position: they typically raise their enhancement-package level first (often using the Software Update Manager with the Database Migration Option to combine the upgrade with a HANA move), and then run a system conversion to S/4HANA — or take a greenfield re-implementation where the existing customisation is no longer worth carrying. No path grants these specific levels a paid extended-maintenance extension, so the conversion itself is the only durable answer.

Anyone still running ECC 6.0 at EHP5 or below should treat this as the single most urgent SAP timeline they own. Because these levels reach their cut-off without an extended-maintenance safety net, finance leaders, Basis teams, security and internal-audit functions all have a stake: an unsupported core ERP means no legal or tax updates, no security notes and a widening compliance gap. A funded, sponsored migration programme — with a clear target release and data strategy — needs to be in motion rather than on a wish-list.