Mainstream maintenance for SAP Commerce on-premise ends July 2026. Three migration paths, five critical questions, and real-world examples - a guide for B2B decision-makers who want more than a platform swap.
Here is the uncomfortable truth about SAP Commerce migration: most of the advice circulating right now is written by vendors trying to sell you their platform. The deadline is real - SAP ends mainstream maintenance for SAP Commerce on-premise (formerly Hybris) on July 31, 2026 - but the decision you face is more nuanced than “pick a new vendor and go.”
Over 3,000 companies worldwide still run SAP Hybris Commerce, with Germany representing the second-largest market at roughly 267 organizations. Most are mid-to-large enterprises with complex B2B requirements in manufacturing, wholesale, and industrial goods. For these companies, a migration is not an IT project. It is a fundamental business decision about how commerce will operate for the next decade.
This guide cuts through the noise. We will cover what is actually changing, why your migration path matters more than your platform choice, and how to evaluate options without falling into the traps that make enterprise replatforming projects fail.
SAP has confirmed that version 2205 - the final on-premise release of SAP Commerce - reaches end of mainstream maintenance on July 31, 2026. After that date, SAP will no longer provide security patches, updates, or standard support. Only customer-specific maintenance remains available, without guaranteed response times or security fixes.
This is part of a broader pattern. SAP is systematically moving its entire portfolio to cloud-first delivery, sunsetting on-premise versions of multiple products including SAP BusinessObjects BI and SAP BPC within the same timeframe.
For companies currently running SAP Commerce on-premise, the practical consequences are clear. Unpatched security vulnerabilities will accumulate. Compatibility with modern payment gateways, browsers, and integrations will degrade over time. Internal maintenance costs will rise as the talent pool for legacy SAP Commerce shrinks - a trend already visible in the DACH market, where experienced Hybris developers are increasingly difficult to find.
The question is not whether to act, but how.
Every SAP Commerce migration discussion starts with platform selection. That is the wrong starting point. The right question is: what kind of migration does your business need? There are three fundamentally different paths, and each has distinct implications for cost, timeline, and long-term capability.
SAP’s own recommended path is migration to SAP Commerce Cloud—their hosted, cloud-native evolution of the same platform. This is the lowest-friction option if your organization is deeply embedded in the SAP ecosystem and you need continuity above all else.
The trade-off: you are moving to a new deployment model, not a new architecture. Many of the structural limitations that drove customization complexity on-premise—rigid data models, monolithic process flows, custom code dependencies—carry forward. You gain operational stability and continued vendor support. You do not fundamentally change how your commerce system operates.
For organizations whose primary goal is risk mitigation and deadline compliance, this path makes sense. For those seeking operational transformation, it may simply defer the harder conversation.
The second path involves replacing SAP Commerce entirely with a composable commerce architecture - assembling a stack from specialized components (commerce engine, PIM, OMS, search, CMS) connected via APIs.
This approach promises flexibility and modern architecture. It also introduces the challenge that many composable adopters are now confronting: flexibility without orchestration leads to fragmentation. When you operate six or seven independent services, the processes that span those services—order-to-cash, quote-to-delivery, returns - still need someone or something to coordinate them. APIs connect systems, but they do not orchestrate outcomes.
Organizations that choose this path without addressing the orchestration layer often experience what we call “Composable Regret” - a modern, expensive stack that still requires manual intervention at every handoff point.
The third path treats migration as an opportunity to fundamentally change how commerce operations work. Instead of replacing one platform with another (or with several), you implement a system designed to orchestrate end-to-end processes - connecting existing infrastructure, automating workflows across tools, and enabling business teams to adapt processes without engineering dependency.
This is the approach behind Autonomous Commerce Execution: platforms that combine commerce capabilities with process orchestration and intelligent automation. Rather than building integrations between tools, you model Value Streams - end-to-end flows that connect systems, data, and decisions into coherent business processes.
The result is fundamentally different from both a lift-and-shift and a composable rebuild. Instead of operating a collection of tools, you operate a commerce system that thinks and acts across those tools.
Regardless of which path you lean toward, these five questions will determine whether your migration succeeds or becomes the next multi-year IT project that fails to deliver business value.
Abstract frameworks are helpful. Concrete examples are better.
HABA FAMILYGROUP, a German manufacturer operating across B2C, B2B, and B2B2C channels, replaced their existing SAP Commerce (Hybris) solution with a modern SaaS tech stack. The goal was to reduce operating costs and consolidate three separate sales channels onto a single platform. The first channel went live within four months. The result: a composable architecture with significantly lower total cost of ownership and improved customer experiences across all channels.
DORMA-Glas, another German B2B manufacturer, is following a similar path—replacing their SAP Commerce legacy solution with a composable architecture built on a SaaS foundation. Their approach includes a headless storefront, configurable products, and a phased roadmap to connect specialist retailers over time.
Both cases share a common pattern: the migration was not about swapping platforms. It was about moving from a build-and-maintain model to an operate-and-adapt model - reducing the custom code burden while gaining the ability to evolve without replatforming again.
SAP Commerce migration is not a technology decision. It is an operational decision that happens to involve technology. The organizations that approach it as a replatforming project will get a new system. Those that approach it as an opportunity to rethink how commerce operations work will get a competitive advantage.
The July 2026 deadline creates urgency, but urgency should not drive poor decisions. Start with the five questions above. Map your customizations, understand your process dependencies, and be honest about what you are actually trying to solve.
If you are evaluating your options and want a structured framework for the decision, we have built a comprehensive migration decision guide that walks through evaluation criteria, total cost of ownership analysis, and migration planning timelines specific to B2B enterprises leaving SAP Commerce.