End of Maintenance for SAP Solution Manager 7.2

SAP Solution Manager 7.2: End of Maintenance Phase

The maintenance phase for SAP Solution Manager is coming to an end. Its successor, SAP Cloud ALM, is already waiting in the wings. Learn more about the remaining timeline for Solution Manager and what you need to consider.

SAP Solution Manager, SAP's highly integrative and powerful ALM Suite, will celebrate a milestone birthday next year. SAP Solution Manager (Release 3.2) was released to customers on 22 October 2004 and will celebrate its 20th birthday next year. Solution Manager 3.2 was followed by Solution Manager 7.0 (released to customers on 16 December 2005), Solution Manager 7.1 (released to customers on 16 May 2011) and lastly the current release Solution Manager 7.2 (released to customers on 11 December 2015). Over time, the on-premise ALM application was expanded and enhanced to include more and more new functions. The development of Solution Manager also followed the trend of ERP development. Consequently, the classic SAP GUI became less and less important. Fiori apps and other web technologies, on the other hand, dominated the end-user experience.

As a result, next year's milestone birthday will at most be followed by its 25th anniversary because the maintenance end date for Solution Manager 7.2 has already been set. Mainstream maintenance will cease on 31 December 2027 while extended maintenance will run until 31 January 2030.
 

In line with SAP's ALM strategy, there will be no further on-premise ALM applications. Therefore, the decision has been made to cease maintenance for Solution Manager. SAP's successor is the cloud application SAP Cloud ALM, which is already available but is still under development. SAP Cloud ALM remains true to the ALM strategy by providing a wide range of functionalities and features to support and accelerate transformation projects to SAP S/4HANA. As is the case with Solution Manager, SAP's best-practice business processes can be loaded directly into Cloud ALM and used as a basis for fit-gap workshops.

From a functional perspective, SAP Cloud ALM will undoubtedly be based on some aspects of Solution Manager. However, since it is not a direct successor product, the functionalities can be completely redesigned and developed. For customers who have invested heavily in Solution Manager, either in terms of its content or add-on developments, the following questions arise: How can we secure our investment and what options are available to us for migration to Cloud ALM? At XEPTUM, we are happy to help you identify what end of maintenance means for you and work with you to develop and implement a suitable strategy for the transition from Solution Manager to Cloud ALM.