Last week, I had the privilege of attending my first SAP ALM Summit North America as a Rev-Trac representative. It was an incredible opportunity to deepen my understanding of SAP Cloud ALM, connect with customers, and gain firsthand insights into the questions and challenges SAP users face.
I felt a real love and excitement about Cloud ALM and its capabilities from the SAP team. While Cloud ALM continues to evolve, the message from SAP was simple: start “today” and look to the roadmap for future feature releases unique to the needs of your organisation.
One caveat to this (and a practical one at that) is that if your organisation is currently running a project on SolMan, to continue to do so and not try and migrate it to Cloud ALM. Cloud ALM can be used for other projects in the meantime.
Clean Core and Shifting Left
A recurring theme throughout the Summit was achieving and maintaining a clean core—a modern SAP best practice aimed at keeping custom code outside the SAP digital core to support agility, upgrades and innovation.
Rev-Trac’s Head of Product and Strategy, Chris Drake, explored this in his keynote, “Set up S/4HANA for Success: Strategies to Migrate and Prepare for a Clean Core.” He emphasised the benefits of “shifting left”—addressing code quality earlier in the development lifecycle to avoid costly rework and ensure cleaner, more stable production systems.
SolMan’s Sunset and Readiness Checks
As the end-of-life for Solution Manager and ChaRM approaches, it’s no surprise that migration strategies dominated many discussions. One highly recommended first step is the SAP Cloud ALM Readiness Check. It provides:
- A view of current SolMan usage
- Insights into available Cloud ALM features mapped to your needs
- Guidance on how to plan and scope your transition.
Enhancing the Cloud ALM Journey with Strategic Partners
While SAP is still enhancing Cloud ALM and referencing the roadmap often so customers can see when new features will be available, it is clear that customers with large and/or complex SAP landscapes will need to continue to lean on SAP’s partners so ‘fill the gaps’ for their unique circumstances. This is something Rev-Trac has been proud to offer in the Change Management space thanks to our advanced SAP automation platform, Rev-Trac Platinum.
This spirit of collaboration was a standout at the Summit—an encouraging sign of how the SAP ecosystem is uniting to support customers through change.
Embracing Continuous Updates
A benefit of Cloud ALM’s value proposition is the bi-weekly feature updates from SAP. While this has the advantage of more timely updates and availability of anticipated features, the volume of regular updates raised a few eyebrows. SAP clarified that these are add-on enhancements designed to improve the overall experience and functionality. Email notifications will explain the context of each release, making it easier to stay informed. With this in mind, adapting to the regular release of change will become a new way of working for SAP users using Cloud ALM.
My Personal Highlight: The ‘Ask Me Anything’ Sessions
For me, the two ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions with SAP’s Experts and Leaders were the highlight of the Summit. I appreciated the open forum and chance for delegates to ask questions to those who are really in the know. It led to lively discussion and a lot of learnings for all delegates.
What’s next?
So where to from here? As SAP suggests, keep an eye on the roadmap for features relevant to your organisation that might not be available just yet. Keep partners in mind if there is functionality not yet ready that your business needs now. Rev-Trac Platinum’s retrofit capability for Cloud ALM is just one of these things. (And yes, it’s available it right now.)
The Summit closed with the exciting announcement that the ALM Summit NA will be back again in April 2026. I am sure with continued enthusiasm and robust discussion!
