The End of SAP Solution Manager

SAP Solution Manager (or “SolMan” for short) has been the mature solution of choice for many companies for their application lifecycle management (ALM) strategy for several years. It performs tasks within an SAP topology such as managing processes, tests, and changes, but also monitors the business processes. If these functions are missing, SAP implementations can suffer serious failures, often resulting in financial losses. However, SolMan is primarily a solution for on-premises landscapes, as the cloud was not as ubiquitous at the time of its introduction as it is today.

The Solution Manager comprises a wide range of functions relating to SAP IT operations: Test case management, risk-based testing, test data management, technical monitoring, change/transport management, security, process management, infrastructure management, landscape management and often also central applications such as CUA (Central User Administration) or other technical services/gateway functions.

And this is precisely the core of SAP's decision to continue Solution Manager maintenance only until 2027: the migration of on-prem systems (SAP ECC) to the cloud-based ERP solution S/4 Hana, which SAP is promoting (and forcing) with every means at its disposal. Customers can extend SolMan maintenance until 2030, but only in the form of paid extended maintenance, which, according to SAP, will not cover all SolMan functions.

As the name suggests, the SAP Cloud ALM solution offered by SAP is geared towards cloud systems and is less suitable for on-prem landscapes. SAP also expressly emphasizes that it is not a successor to SolMan - at least at this point in time. Whether the rather tight time frame until 2027 will be sufficient to develop the product to the functional level of SolMan remains questionable.

Whatever you think of this SAP strategy, the end of Solution Manager is an officially decided fact that cannot be argued away. For SAP users, this discontinuation is just as drastic as the end of support for ECC, as it has a direct impact on customers' ability to continue their IT operations for SAP as usual.

Users and system administrators must therefore proactively face up to the resulting challenges instead of struggling with them—or, in the worst case, even ignoring them. Because even though 2027 still seems so far away today, a successful replacement of SolMan is only possible with extensive preliminary considerations and carefully planned measures developed from them.

First and foremost, it is necessary to ask yourself a few key questions, such as what is Solution Manager currently used for? What functions can SAP Cloud ALM perform? Can our systems be transferred to the cloud? Are there possibly more suitable external third-party solutions?

Will we miss Solution Manager at all?

As the use of Solution Manager is prescribed by SAP, it enjoys a broad presence. However, smaller companies only use it for these mandatory areas and will hardly notice its absence. For larger companies, however, the situation is quite different. Larger companies make excessive use of the Change Request Management (CHaRM) and IT Service Management (ITSM) integrated in SolMan. They will also sorely miss SolMan’s business process monitoring functions, which they rely on to operate their SAP landscapes.

Is SAP Cloud ALM the saving grace?

As already mentioned, Cloud ALM cannot—at least at present—take over all the functions of SolMan. Third-party solutions are recommended for ITSM and a fully-fledged replacement for CHaRM is still being worked on. However, they are indispensable for those companies that use them for their change and transport processes, etc. Similarly, the entire monitoring in Cloud ALM is very much geared towards SAP standards and can be tailored much less to individual requirements.

SAP managers themselves are also showing signs of reevaluation. Previously, the message was that the CHaRM functionality built into Solution Manager was completely sufficient and that DevOps products from third-party providers were unnecessary. Cloud ALM, however, is completely different: SAP is opening up the solution to partner companies via Open Telemetry and APIs in order to close the gaps that obviously exist. Fittingly, Marc Thiers was quoted at the last ALM Summit in Mannheim in October 2023 on the question of CHaRM functionality with the words: “I am too old to have enemies.”

It bears remembering that cloud ALM is only available in and for the cloud. Companies from regulated sectors, for example, for which a cloud migration is out of the question for legal reasons, are literally left out in the cold.

Take action early on and explore alternatives

Regardless of whether a company is planning to switch to cloud ALM, or whether a third-party solution is the ideal solution, the situation remains the same: time is running out! A migration—or possibly even the introduction of a hybrid (transitional) solution consisting of on-prem and cloud—requires extensive pre-planning and extends to the detailed training of employees involved in the changeover.

The sooner those responsible deal with the issue—without immediately panicking—the better. The first step is to determine which Solution Manager functions you actually use. If possible, involve all stakeholders who are affected in any way by the discontinuation of SolMan.

Then check whether Cloud ALM sufficiently covers the functions you use. At this point, it is often possible to consolidate previously heterogeneously distributed or missing functions in a third-party solution such as an AIOps platform. Ideally, such a solution not only offers the desired breadth of functionality, but also supports your individual SAP topology—be it cloud, on-prem, or a hybrid combination of both worlds. And even companies that are in the process of migrating to S/4 in the cloud (which can take years—a well-known Bavarian car manufacturer has set 2030 as the target) may (need to) leave some areas on their local computers.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that this mixed situation results in a mixed picture, which can be different for each company. Smaller companies are generally slightly or not at all affected by the announcement of the end of the Solution Manager—unless, for example, they have developed their own special monitoring automatisms based on it. In contrast, larger companies face major challenges in the operation of their SAP landscapes, which will become all the greater and more critical the longer they remain inactive. And looking at the somewhat diffuse SAP roadmap in this context, it is tempting to declare the end of SolMan today (especially as additional functions such as Focused Build, Focused Insights, Focused Run and Lama await a similar fate), and look for alternatives elsewhere.

Obviously, many managers underestimate the disruptive effects of this discontinuation as well as the time, costs and personnel required for a successful transition. But this is not a technical upgrade including seamless migration. Rather, it requires careful planning, dedicated data mapping and often also individual customization. After all, there are significant changes in the way business processes are managed and monitored.

In addition to this challenge, however, there is also a no less significant opportunity. In view of the inevitable investment in one or more new alternative solutions to SolMan, there is an ideal opportunity for most companies to think outside the box. The market already offers solutions in the form of DevOps products and AIOps platforms from renowned providers that have been tried and tested for years. Such solutions are not only capable of replacing Solution Manager, but they usually offer additional functionality and also flexibly cover all current and future SAP topologies. It is therefore worth taking a closer, proactive look here instead of just allowing everything to happen.

avantra.com