How does Clean Core relate to upgradability and cloud readiness?

Upgradability and cloud readiness are essentially two faces of the same underlying property: a system whose core is unmodified can absorb SAP's regular updates with minimal friction, and that same property is precisely what makes a system eligible to move to (or already be running on) S/4HANA Cloud, where the customer never has direct access to modify core objects in the first place.

flowchart LR
    A[Clean Core maintained] --> B[Smooth, low-friction upgrades]
    A --> C[Cloud-eligible architecture]
    B --> D[Lower total cost of ownership over time]
    C --> D

This is why Clean Core assessments are often an early, foundational step in any S/4HANA Cloud transformation roadmap — before a migration project can even be properly scoped, the organization needs to understand how far its current core modification level is from a genuinely clean state, since that gap directly determines the remediation effort the transformation program must budget for.