Cloud revenue is growing at pace, SAP Cloud ERP is the primary vehicle, and the most significant product innovations (Joule, agentic AI capabilities, the Business Data Cloud) are arriving in SAP Cloud ERP first, with on-premise customers receiving a narrower feature set in each successive release cycle.

According to Gartner, close to half of the original ECC customer base will still be running ECC when mainstream maintenance ends in 2027. SAP’s own financial results show that on-premise support revenue in 2025 was contracting far more slowly than SAP’s own models had anticipated, sitting approximately €2 billion above the target SAP had set for that year.

In DSAG member surveys, roughly half of remaining ECC users intend to continue investing in the legacy platform beyond the 2027 deadline. The migration wave is real, and it is building, but the timeline is measured in years and the volume of customers still mid-journey is substantial.

For consultants with on-premise backgrounds, that gap between SAP’s ambitions and the market’s actual pace of adoption is where much of the work is located.

The Reasons Hybrid Landscapes Persist

Migration inertia accounts for some of the picture, but a significant proportion of customers running hybrid or predominantly on-premise landscapes are doing so for reasons that have nothing to do with reluctance or lack of investment.

Regulatory and data sovereignty obligations shape deployment decisions for organisations in defence, financial services, healthcare, and public sector in ways that are not easily resolved by moving to a standard multi-tenant cloud environment.

The fragmentation of global data regulation (GDPR, HIPAA, FedRAMP, and a growing range of national equivalents) means that for many large enterprises, certain workloads cannot legally or operationally sit on shared hyperscaler infrastructure. SAP’s September 2025 launch of Sovereign Cloud On-Site, which places SAP-managed infrastructure within the customer’s own facilities, is a direct commercial response to that demand.

The sheer scale and customisation depth of large ECC landscapes creates migration timelines that run to multiple years regardless of how committed a customer is to the destination. According to Gartner VP Fabio Di Capua, migration costs for complex enterprise landscapes can reach as much as nine figures, and programmes spanning three to seven years are common for organisations with heavily customised systems.

During those programmes, the customer is running a hybrid environment (part legacy, part new platform) by necessity.

Many organisations are also navigating pre-existing hyperscaler contracts with AWS, Azure, or GCP that shape how and where S/4HANA is hosted, producing hybrid arrangements that were not part of the original programme design.

Add the deliberate strategy of moving non-critical workloads first while retaining core ERP on-premise, and the picture that emerges is of hybrid as a sustained and often intentional state rather than a temporary inconvenience.

Defining the Hybrid Terrain

The term hybrid covers several distinct project types, and consultants who can recognise and articulate the differences are better placed to target their skills effectively.

The most prevalent pattern in large enterprise landscapes is a stable on-premise or SAP Cloud ERP Private core running alongside cloud-based SAP line-of-business applications (SuccessFactors for HR, Ariba for procurement, IBP for supply chain planning) connected through SAP BTP Integration Suite.

A second pattern is the active migration state, where a customer’s ECC or on-premise S/4HANA system is running in parallel with a partially live cloud environment during a system conversion, brownfield migration, or selective data transition.

The third pattern is the extension model, where the core ERP is not moving but cloud-based innovation is being layered on top through BTP applications, APIs, and event-driven integrations.

SAP Cloud ERP Private (formerly known as S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, delivered through RISE with SAP) is itself fully cloud-hosted on single-tenant hyperscaler infrastructure. The projects that put customers onto it, however, frequently require managing hybrid operations throughout delivery, which is where on-premise experience becomes directly relevant.

Across all three patterns, BTP Integration Suite is the connective tissue, having largely replaced SAP PI/PO as the integration platform of record for new implementations and hybrid projects. Consultants who understand the legacy integration architecture and can translate it into BTP-native patterns are occupying a role that the market requires in great numbers.

The Transferability of On-Premise Skills

The skills that on-premise consultants have accumulated over years of ECC and S/4HANA implementation work transfer directly into hybrid and migration delivery in ways that are not always obvious from the outside.

Business process knowledge built through repeated full-cycle implementations of FI/CO, MM, SD, or PP is the starting point for every migration scoping exercise. Understanding how a client’s processes are modelled in their legacy system, where the customisations are load-bearing and where they are historical accidents, is knowledge that no amount of cloud certification can substitute for. Cloud-native consultants do not enter the talent market with this. It is assembled over years of on-premise delivery.

Data migration is where that depth becomes most commercially relevant. According to industry research cited by Informatica, data management is the top challenge in ECC-to-S/4HANA migrations for the majority of enterprises undertaking them.

Knowledge of legacy data structures, master data governance in ECC, and the practical mechanics of SAP’s migration tooling is scarce at the level of experience that complex programmes require. The same applies to legacy integration architecture: designing BTP Integration Suite replacements for existing IDoc, RFC, and PI/PO-based interfaces requires understanding what those interfaces are doing and why, before any design work begins.

Building the Other Half of the Profile

The practical question for an on-premise consultant who recognises this opportunity is which cloud skills to add, and in what order.

The answer depends partly on specialism, but some priorities hold across functional areas. A working understanding of SAP Activate is the baseline. It governs how hybrid projects are scoped, phased, and governed, and a consultant who cannot align with it is at a disadvantage in both interviews and delivery. SAP Fiori familiarity matters for the same reason: it is the user experience layer across both S/4HANA Cloud and on-premise, and functional consultants are expected to work within it.

BTP Integration Suite is the certification that carries the most weight for consultants with a legacy integration background.

The associate-level certification is achievable without deep development expertise, and it shows clients and consultancies that the consultant can operate in the connective layer between on-premise and cloud systems, where hybrid projects generate the most complexity. For senior consultants moving toward architecture roles, the BTP Solution Architect certification (P_BTPA) opens doors to programme-level positions that carry significantly higher commercial value. S/4HANA module certifications updated to reflect current cloud editions are worth maintaining, both because SAP’s Stay Certified annual renewal process requires it and because they confirm that a consultant’s functional knowledge tracks the platform as it evolves.

Certification opens the door to project conversations, but project experience is what realises the commercial value of the certification. For consultants whose current employer is not yet delivering hybrid or migration work, the most direct route to initial cloud exposure is through consultancies that are consistently seeking senior functional consultants with on-premise depth to complement cloud-native delivery teams.

SAP Learning Hub’s hands-on system environments allow self-directed preparation before that first cloud project, and SAP Community contributions on migration topics build visibility in the right professional circles at the same time.

Making Your Dual Value Visible

The skill combination only generates commercial return if the market can read it clearly, and most on-premise consultants understate the migration-relevant aspects of their experience when presenting themselves to clients or consultancies.

A CV or LinkedIn profile that leads with module specialism and years on ECC is describing a legacy career. The same experience reframed around brownfield migration delivery, data migration leadership, legacy integration design, cutover management, and landscape assessment is describing exactly what the current project pipeline needs.

Clients and programme managers reading hybrid project briefs are scanning for specific terms: brownfield conversion, system conversion, selective data transition, clean core assessment, BTP integration design, and a profile that uses that vocabulary is recognised as relevant. This is worth the time investment of a deliberate rewrite rather than incremental additions to an existing document.

Within the hybrid consulting space, the most acute supply shortages are in specific sub-profiles.

Data migration specialists with ECC landscape experience, integration architects who can manage the transition from PI/PO to BTP Integration Suite, and brownfield programme leads who can run a complex system conversion from scoping through go-live are the profiles that consultancies and clients are finding hardest to fill at senior level.

Developing depth in one of those combined areas increases commercial value faster than remaining a broad functional generalist, and it creates a distinct professional identity.

Current contractor rate data from specialist SAP recruitment guides covering the DACH market places senior S/4HANA consultants with migration and hybrid delivery experience at the upper end of the market range, with Switzerland commanding the highest figures in the region.

Consultants at this level who are also visible in the SAP community through published content, user group participation, or conference presence, find that inbound opportunities increasingly supplement the traditional recruitment channel.

A Market Measured in Years

The reasonable concern underneath all of this is whether upskilling for hybrid delivery is a short-term play that the market will outgrow as cloud adoption eventually reaches the majority of the installed base.

According to Gartner projections, more than a third of the original ECC customer base will still be running on the legacy platform in 2030. Migration programmes for complex enterprise landscapes run to multiple years, meaning the consulting demand those programmes generate extends well beyond the year a customer signs a RISE contract.

SAP has committed support for on-premise S/4HANA customers to 2040, confirming that the on-premise and hybrid landscape will remain a commercially active space for the foreseeable working lifetime of most consultants currently mid-career.

SAP itself has responded to slower-than-projected migration rates by shifting commercial focus toward upselling AI and Business Data Cloud capabilities to the existing installed base: a strategy that keeps those customers engaged with SAP products while they complete their transitions on their own timelines.

That dynamic extends the period of hybrid operation for a large proportion of the customer base, sustaining demand for the consulting skills that serve those customers throughout.

The Work the Market Most Needs Done

The commercial opportunity for a hybrid-positioned SAP consultant is grounded in a straightforward supply and demand reality.

The volume of migration and hybrid project work in the market is growing faster than the supply of consultants who can serve it credibly from both ends: understanding the legacy system well enough to scope the departure, and understanding the cloud destination well enough to design the arrival.

Most on-premise consultants have not yet reframed their experience in migration terms. Most cloud-native consultants do not have the legacy depth that complex brownfield programmes require at senior level.

The most practical way to shift your consulting career strategy to take advantage of this market reality is to audit existing skills against what hybrid and migration projects actually require, identify the certification layer that most directly complements your functional specialism, target project types that develop both sides of the profile simultaneously, and present your experience in the language of the work that needs doing.

The hybrid consultant’s commercial advantage is not simply knowing two delivery models, but in being able to move a client from one to the other, which remains the work the SAP market most needs done right now.

If you are an SAP professional looking for a new role in the SAP ecosystem our team of dedicated recruitment consultants can match you with your ideal employer and negotiate a competitive compensation package for your extremely valuable skills, so join our exclusive community at IgniteSAP.