As businesses migrate to S/4HANA and embrace new technologies like RISE with SAP and BTP, they face increasing challenges in managing change in complex environments.
IT teams must oversee a mix of ABAP, non-ABAP, and SAP BTP changes across on-premises, Cloud, and hybrid landscapes while maintaining stability, security, and compliance. At the same time, the sun is setting on Solution Manager (SolMan), which many organizations have come to rely on to run their SAP infrastructure.
The bottom line is that SAP change management is undergoing a significant transformation, and organizations need to update their tools and SAP change management processes to govern the different types of changes.
In this blog, I will examine what’s next in change management and give insight into how to navigate change in the era of hybrid SAP landscapes.
You will learn:
- The path ahead after SolMan reaches end-of-life in 2027
- The latest develops in SAP Cloud ALM
- How Rev-Trac, a third-party alternative, can help to unify change across technologies
No more SolMan
SolMan is facing end of life by 2027, which impacts Change and Request Management (ChaRM), the functionality for (technical) change management. There are no plans for further releases after SolMan 7.2. However, SAP has announced that extended support will be available until 2030 under certain circumstances, but it comes at a cost. Organizations will have to extend maintenance for SAP Business Suite 7.
Why is this important?
SAP introduced SolMan in the mid-2000s as an on-premises solution. It was designed to be the backbone of an SAP environment. Customers connected SolMan to all systems in their SAP landscape.
SolMan has evolved over the years, incorporating critical capabilities like cross-system object locking, downgrade protection, and retrofit. These capabilities have assisted organizations using ChaRM to efficiently manage changes in their SAP landscapes — although with many known ChaRM complexities and limitations.
Today, you can use ChaRM to manage ABAP and non-ABAP changes, such as Java-based applications and SAP BTP through CTS+, but unfortunately, ChaRM doesn’t support the preferred BTP method using CTMS. ChaRM is also available for RISE with SAP environments, but that typically incurs additional SAP hosting costs for deploying a SolMan system in RISE.
Yet, if you are heavily invested in SolMan to manage your changes, there is limited time to take advantage of any benefits.
Enter Cloud ALM
SAP’s strategic direction in the last several years has been steadily skyward, with the company shifting SAP solutions to the Cloud. As part of this evolution, SAP introduced Cloud ALM, a Cloud-native application lifecycle management solution to streamline change management in complex hybrid environments, including Public and Private Clouds and RISE with SAP.
For example, SAP advises organizations adopting SAP BTP to use Cloud ALM to manage BTP changes. But if you’re using ChaRM to manage ABAP and non-ABAP changes, you are using two solutions, which can drain resources and slow down processes.
Two key areas to consider when looking at SAP’s newest ALM tool are Cloud ALM for Operations and Cloud ALM for Implementation. Cloud ALM for Operations – focusing on monitoring – is more mature, and SAP recommends starting with that now.
However, it suggests you adopt SAP Cloud AM for Implementation at your own pace to complete your migration to S/4HANA. Cloud ALM is still evolving but doesn’t have change management capabilities like retrofit and cross-object locking that are available in SolMan. SAP continues to expand its functionality, with its roadmap indicating that some key equivalent (ChaRM-like) capabilities will roll out gradually from early 2025 through 2026 and beyond.
Additionally, SAP provides Cloud ALM as a ‘fit to standard’ solution. That effectively means everyone using Cloud ALM to manage SAP changes and transports must use it in the same way. There are little to no options for adjusting your change management workflows in Cloud ALM.
Organizations reliant on some of the missing functionality should monitor developments closely. SAP advises these customers to continue using SolMan and migrate to SAP Cloud ALM when ready. Yet, migrating from SolMan to Cloud ALM is not a straightforward transition – the two are built on entirely different architectures. For businesses currently using ChaRM, moving to Cloud ALM means starting again from the beginning.
Are there third-party alternatives?
Third-party alternatives to SolMan have been around for years. As SAP IT teams juggle transformation projects and managing multiple technologies in hybrid landscapes, now might be a good time to explore alternative solutions – especially when SolMan is EOL and Cloud ALM is a work-in-progress with unknown timelines.
Alternative solutions offer flexibility, are tailor-made to fufill a specific function, can optimize workflows, and enhance overall efficiency.
Rev-Trac Platinum, our flagship product, is a third-party alternative to SolMan’s ChaRM tool. The advanced SAP change management solution can help SAP users in several ways.
- With Rev-Trac, an organization can manage ABAP, non-ABAP, and BTP changes from a single central interface. Users get real-time visibility into all changes across their SAP landscape.
- Rev-Trac can support a simple 3-tier landscape to complex N+1 configurations or multiple qualities type systems.
- Bi-directional integration with Cloud ALM, Jira, ServiceNow, and Tricentis, along with other popular testing and code review tools, as well as impact analysis and ITSM solutions. Using Rev-Trac, you can integrate and orchestrate third-party applications to build a unified SAP DevOps toolchain or CI/CD pipeline for faster change delivery.
- Rev-Trac is the enforcement engine and orchestration layer across your change management processes.
Bottom line: the future of SAP change management
In the world of ever-evolving SAP landscapes, the pressure to efficiently manage SAP changes has never been higher.
Organizations need a flexible change management solution that unifies change across interconnected systems, hosting scenarios and emerging technologies like RISE with SAP, BTP, and Cloud ALM.
Are you ready for the next era of SAP change management? For a deeper insight watch: SAP change management — what’s changing? Lots of things, including no more SolMan.
