SAP Business One turns up in "legacy ERP" think-pieces with tedious regularity, and the prediction is always the same: surely SAP will retire its SME product any year now. The prediction keeps being wrong. Here's what the actual trajectory looks like from inside the ecosystem, where we've recruited for over a decade.
The evidence, not the rumour
SAP keeps investing. The roadmap runs through version 11 — web-first, cloud-native, AI-threaded — with the on-premise base given a long runway rather than an ultimatum; we broke that roadmap down in detail here. The customer base sits north of 80,000 companies. And the partner channel — the truest health signal, because partners bet payroll on it — keeps hiring. We'd know. They hire through us.
What IS ending is a version of B1: the SQL-backed, heavily-customised, on-premise install that ran unattended for a decade. Its replacement is HANA-based, cloud-delivered and integrated, and the migration between those two worlds is the defining project of the platform's next five years.
What that future pays
Follow the migration and you find the money. HANA experience already carries a 12–18% premium over SQL-only profiles. Consultants fluent in cloud deployment and integration sit at the top of the bands — £66,000–£82,500 for senior UK functional people, more for SDK developers — and the full structure is in our B1 salary guide.
Our view, plainly: B1 is not a legacy platform, but legacy skills on it are real. A consultant whose toolkit froze in the SQL era will feel the market cool around them while HANA-and-cloud peers get bid up. Same platform, opposite careers.
If you run B1, the future arrives as a migration decision — start the add-on audit before the deadline pressure prices it for you. If you work in B1, check where your skill set sits with the salary checker, and if the answer disappoints, that's a conversation we have every week.