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A while back, SAP announced the general availability of SAP Cloud ALM for August 31st, 2020, and with it, introduced a third major tool to the SAP ALM portfolio.
Now that the dust has settled, I’d like to address two common question I have received since: «So what exactly is the difference between Solution Manager and CloudALM?» and «Does this mean Solution Manager is dead?».
To answer the first questions I want to take a look at the entire SAP ALM Portfolio and for good measure, throw Focused Run into the mix.
Focused Run. One of the three Focused Solutions that in itself is already the odd chicken in the pen, as it is a standalone tool, rather than an add-on to SolMan. While Focused Run is technically an ALM Tool, its customer targeting means, most of us mortals won’t ever be exposed to it in our SAP careers.
Focused Run is designed for large scale operations, or scenarios that have more complex requirements, such as multi-tenancy concepts, and was introduced as an alternative to Solution Manager environments, where a typical SolMan setup simply can’t cope with the underlying environment.
For this reason, it deserves an honorable mention here, but really doesn’t fit into the comparison of SolMan and CloudALM.
The Solution Manager, in its latest version 7.2, SPS11, is most likely known to us all. It’s the oldest tool in the comparison – one could say the original ALM tool and king of the portfolio.
Solution Manager has evolved over time to meet the requirements of the entire Application Lifecycle. It does so with four key value propositions: Portfolio-to-Project, Requirement-to-Deploy, Request-to-Fulfill and Detect-to-Correct. It introduces 10 functional areas to your SAP landscape that act as the landscape nervous system, serving as the single source of truth and central platform for day-to-day management. Notable areas of functionality are Process Management, Test Suite, Project Management, Business Process Operations, Application Operations, Data Volume Management, Change Control Management, IT Service Management, Custom Code Management and Landscape Management.
Solution Manager is targeted to the “average” SAP ECC customer and can be deployed across all scenarios, including On-Prem, Hybrid and Cloud Solutions.
Focused Build is an add-on available through ST-OST that further enhances the Requirement-to-Deploy stream with agile project management, new UI5-Apps and other standalone enhancements. Focused Insights, also available through ST-OST, brings in-depth analytics and reporting to the entire landscape.
So, let’s take a look at CloudALM, the new kid on the block: CloudALM was announced by SAP at the Solution Manager Education Summit, SolEd, back in 2018, as an additional member of the ALM Portfolio.
Public Cloud deployments have changed the way IT organizations need to maintain and manage their infrastructure. With many applications consumed rather as a service than a full-stack deployment, the needs toward monitoring and management changes. As an example, services such as HANA are increasingly managed centrally by SAP, keeping them up-to-date and secure, allowing consumers to focus solely on their business needs and not have to worry about those tedious support tasks.
CloudALM is SAP’s answer to the evolving changes – it comes as a brand new development, meaning that while it benefits from the experiences made with SolMan, they do not share a common code base. It is available for immediate consumption in the public cloud, as an always up-to-date cloud service that does not require basis administration for itself.
As a young product, general availability was announced for August 31st, 2020, it is still under development with many exciting features and functionalities to be added over the next few years.
It focuses on two main modes of operation: Implementation, meaning implementing SAP solutions to your organization, and Operations, tasks evolving around keep your organizational needs up-and-running and continuously enhancing them.
CloudALM is targeted toward customers looking to implement pure public-cloud based deployments, although hybrid landscape support has been announced in the near future.
Aren’t we all. Maybe the following table makes it somewhat clearer to understand:
| SAP Solution Manger | SAP Cloud ALM | |
|---|---|---|
| On-Prem | X | |
| Cloud | X | X |
| Hybrid | X | (X)* |
| Usage Rights | SAP Enterprise and Standard Support | SAP Enterprise Support, cloud editions |
| Development Status | Active, new features announced | Active, new features announced |
| Migration from SolMan | – | No, only greenfield projects |
| Functional Scope | ||
| Application Operations | X | (X) |
| Business Process Operations | X | (X) |
| Data Volume Management | X | No |
| Change Control management | X | (X) |
| Custom Code Management | X | No |
| IT Service Management | X | No |
| Landscape Management | X | No |
| Process Management | X | (X) |
| Project Management | X | (X) |
| Test Suite | X | (X) |
| Focused Build & Insights | X | No |
Now that that is settled, it’s time to look at the second question.
In short: In time, yes.**
Wait! Keep Calm and Read On!
Admittedly, the question is a hard one to answer and it’s not pure black-or-white. SAP has officially communicated that SolMan will stay an integer part of it ALM portfolio. The recent extension of support for Business Suite 7, as well as still active commitment to the customer connection program and development on SolMan, definitely give SolMan an additional lease on life.
However, realistically, the trend to cloud is here to stay. And it won’t pass-by SAP. As more customers move to new deployment strategies, the requirements of an ALM tool also change. This will cause significant resource requirements for maintaining and on-going development of such a tool, let alone two. It will remain to be seen if/how soon SolMan will loose its seat on the throne to its new in-house challenger, CloudALM.
On top, I find the wording of SAPs answer on this question intriguing. They don’t answer it with a clear ‘No’, rather with
“SAP Cloud ALM is not a legal successor of SAP Solution Manager.”
Interesting, right?
So, is SolMan dead? – I personally believe it is not a question of if, but rather of when.
As for Focused Run, the advanced capabilities of the tool remain unmatched and nothing points to it being replaced. Therefore it is, at this time, very safe to assume that nothing will change here in the foreseeable future.
* Limited or Announced but not yet released
** Personal opinion of the author
Today SAP introduced an all-new ALM tool: SAP Cloud ALM, with the cloud intelligent enterprise customer in mind. It has been designed from scratch to answer growing market demands for a tool that drives implementation and reduces total cost of operations with end-to-end management for multi cloud and hybrid cloud deployments.
In many ways todays celebration was special. For one, it happened in a virtual setting as travel and public events are still restricted. But, what made it far more memorable, is the fact, that new product launches of this magnitude don’t come around the corner too often. In fact, Marc Thier, SVP Technology Support at SAP called it a “Once in a decade event”
Cloud ALM is designed to act as the “glue” between all intelligent enterprise cloud products. It will allow implementation and operation for products such as S/4HANA Cloud, SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Ariba and SAP Customer Experience solutions.
With cloud becoming ever more important and release cycles becoming ever shorter, the need for a reliable ALM support tools in the background is becoming increasingly important. To live up to those expectations, Cloud ALM will focus on two major stages in cloud deployments:
Implementation will focus on topics of processes, tasks, testing, change and deployment.
The process context allows to consume SAP best practice processes, such as SAP Activate, visualize them and manage scope changes in fit-to-gap workshops. Tasks allows to manage tasks for implementation that are automatically generated and adapted to customer needs based on SAP Activate. In Testing, you will be able to prepare for manual test and soon also integrate with automated testing tools.
Last but not least in Change and Deploy you will manage your requirements lifecycle by utilizing change management workflow and deployment orchestration.
In the area of Operations topics of interest are Detect, Diagnose, Correct and as a new addition to the ALM Cycle, Automate.
The context of monitoring shifts to business processes, integrations and application performance. Diagnose gains capabilities in analytics & intelligence, such as root cause analysis, business process improvements and predictive technical analytics. Correct is comprised of event & alert management including alert clustering and intelligent event processing.
The newly added context of automation is designed with both reactive and predictive execution of operation flows to avoid repeating tasks and increase overall operational quality.
While Cloud ALM will become available to the general public this summer, the tool is just in its infancy with both further feature and product support in the pipeline. These include project management, continuous delivery and integration, 3rd-party enhancements and many more.
During the event, Josh Greenbaum of EAConsult, shared his experience of his early-access to Cloud ALM. He calls the tool a game changer, leveling the cloud for cloud customers. His extensive summary of Cloud ALM can be found on SAP support website.
The new ALM tool will join the existing family of SAP’s ALM products. Along side SAP Solution Manager and Focused Run, Cloud ALM has been designed to strategically fill a void, not to replace any of the existing tools.
Naturally, the extensive ALM experience portfolio of SAP has help design and develop Cloud ALM.
During the course of the next few weeks SAP will onboard 70 customers to verify the tool, before releasing it to the public on August 31.
Cloud ALM comes free of charge to all existing enterprise cloud subscription customers.
Cloud ALM is designed for immediate consumption, meaning its always online, always up-to-date and you can access it from anywhere.
If you are interested in finding out more about Cloud ALM, please do not hesitate to reach out to our Certified Application Lifecycle Management Professionals. →
With the Solution Manager with Focused Build and Focused Insights, Focused Run and Cloud ALM, SAP currently offers the best ALM product portfolio for the most diverse needs.
If the backlog is not clearly defined and prioritized right at the start of the “requirements to deploy” process, the project risk increases: a lack of transparency leads to delays and additional work. Efficient change management requires clear planning and control so that no rework is required.
SAP has responded to this with the preconfigured best-practice solution Focused Build, making the existing SolMan solution more agile, user-friendly and – last but not least – transparent through full integration.
The SAP ALM methodologies are a clear advantage when planning projects: on the one hand, they are based on the wishes of the user companies – with the SAP Customer Connect program, customer wishes have flowed directly into the product in recent years – and on the other hand, best practices can also be used that build on the project experience of many SAP implementation projects.
In the area of Run and Operations, SAP has taken the diagnostics, monitoring and analysis functions to the next level with Focused Run: Focused Run not only warns of problems at an early stage, but also extends system monitoring so that machine learning, pattern matching, cluster analysis and various visualizations can also be used.
All the valuable experience gained from the on-prem products ultimately flows into the latest SAP Cloud ALM product. Since 2018, SAP has added Cloud ALM to its portfolio and can optimally support cloud-centric projects from planning through to implementation.
Extensions to the range of functions are in the pipeline so that operations functions will also be available in Cloud ALM by 2022. The aim is therefore to ensure that customers with few on-prem solutions also receive an optimal ALM solution.
The strength of the products lies in the fact that the solutions are integrated. Individual areas are not organized in isolated silos, but in value chains, which makes it possible to combine their advantages. The solutions are far more than just monitoring tools: The products support entire scenarios such as “Requirements to Deploy” or “Detect and Correct”.
Where the problems with non-integrated solutions are already programmed, because there is no up-to-date documentation of the company processes or because related changes are not (or cannot be) tested integratively, the ALM solutions from SAP, if implemented and used correctly, minimize the risks, the time required and the costs.
At the same time, both company processes and changes in the system become traceable, making audits unproblematic and the system landscape finally transparent. Full transparency is also underpinned by Focused Insights, which allows complex relationships to be displayed in dashboards quickly and easily.
With Focused Build, every release with all developments and changes in the SAP system landscape is planned from start to finish. This creates an enormously powerful ALM tool. While Excel spreadsheets are passed around with “Management by Office” and the search for documentation and dependencies takes on epic proportions, Focused Build displays and manages all process steps in an up-to-date, transparent and clear manner.
The test scenarios are optimally integrated and supported. Tests can be repeated automatically and are controlled in real time using dashboards. And since SAP projects need to become more efficient so that SAP user companies can cope well with the upcoming major changes, but also the many small changes within a complex solution landscape, all these facts contribute to success. A professional ALM with the Solution Manager and Focused Build sets the course so that a project can be completed reliably and cost-effectively.
This article originally appeared in E-3 magazine