BW/4HANA is available in both deployment options. On-premise or private cloud (which aligns with RISE with SAP Private Cloud) is the most common deployment for organisations with complex BW landscapes or significant data volumes. BW/4HANA is also available as a Cloud Edition (BW/4HANA Cloud) — a SAP-managed hosted version with a simplified scope. For RISE with SAP customers, BW/4HANA can run alongside S/4HANA Private Cloud on the same infrastructure. The key decision factors are data volume, performance requirements, customisation complexity and whether the organisation wants to move to fully managed cloud infrastructure. 2iSolutions delivers BW/4HANA in both deployment models and assesses the right fit during the readiness phase.

Timeline varies significantly based on landscape complexity, object count, custom code volume and the migration approach chosen. For a straightforward shell conversion with a clean BW on HANA landscape (under 500 active objects, minimal custom code), migration can be completed in 3–5 months including assessment, remediation and go-live. For larger, more complex landscapes (1,000+ objects, heavy custom code, multiple source system connections), in-place or remote conversion projects typically run 6–12 months. A BW/4HANA Readiness Assessment — which takes 3–4 weeks — produces a much more accurate timeline by inventorying the actual work involved before the project starts, rather than estimating blindly.

BEx queries technically still work on BW/4HANA and can be consumed by Analysis for Office and other BEx-compatible tools. However, SAP's strategic direction is clear: SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) is the preferred front-end for BW/4HANA going forward, and BEx Query Designer is not enhanced for BW/4HANA. For organisations with a large BEx query inventory, the pragmatic approach is: migrate critical or high-use queries to SAC during the BW/4HANA project, and retire or leave lower-priority queries in BEx temporarily. A full BEx-to-SAC migration is a separate workstream from the BW/4HANA migration itself and is often phased over 12–18 months after go-live. 2iSolutions assesses your BEx query inventory as part of the readiness exercise and recommends a phased migration approach.

SAP has indicated that SAP BW 7.x (including BW on HANA) will receive mainstream maintenance until 2027, with extended maintenance available until 2030 under additional fees. BW/4HANA is SAP's strategic data warehousing platform with planned long-term support. The practical implication: organisations running BW on HANA should plan their migration to BW/4HANA within the 2025–2028 window — starting the assessment now gives adequate time to complete the migration without deadline pressure, which is where migrations tend to go wrong. The maintenance dates also drive negotiating leverage with SAP on licensing during the transition period.

Yes — and this is one of the specific advantages of working with 2iSolutions for BW/4HANA. Most organisations plan their BW/4HANA implementation or migration alongside or shortly after an S/4HANA go-live. Having the same partner manage both means the S/4HANA functional team and the BW/4HANA BI team communicate directly about data structures, delta extraction configuration, master data alignment and key figure definitions — rather than coordinating between two separate firms. This reduces the most common source of BW/4HANA project issues: misalignment between the source system design and the analytical layer that depends on it.