Introduction
The challenge for CIOs is no longer how to manage SAP in isolation, but how to ensure SAP and non-SAP change move in harmony.
When SAP Solution Manager was first implemented, SAP sat at the center of the enterprise. It carried disproportionate risk, drove most large changes, and required specialized controls. SolMan made sense because it provided an integrated view across requirements, testing, transports, and operations, giving leadership confidence that critical SAP changes were governed end-to-end.
That context no longer holds. Today, most organizations experience more frequent and disruptive change outside SAP than inside it. Integrations, extensions, cloud services, and non-SAP platforms now move continuously, while SAP operates as part of a broader business value chain. The challenge is no longer managing SAP as a standalone system, but keeping SAP change synchronized with the enterprise.
The question becomes how organizations can maintain the same essential SAP controls without locking themselves into a delivery model that no longer reflects how the enterprise operates.
The smarter path is to evolve from SAP-centric to enterprise-aligned lifecycle management. This means retaining strong SAP-native controls where they matter, while aligning requirements, design, implementation, testing, and operational monitoring across platforms in a consistent, integrated way. Done correctly, this approach protects existing SAP service levels while preparing the organization for ongoing enterprise transformation.
In this article, we examine how the core capabilities historically provided by Solution Manager can be modernized across the application lifecycle, without sacrificing control or coherence.
The challenge for CIOs is no longer how to manage SAP in isolation, but how to ensure SAP and non-SAP change move in harmony.
Requirements, Design, and Delivery: Aligning SAP Work with Enterprise Execution
SAP delivery works best when requirements and execution move at the same pace as the rest of the enterprise.
In most organizations today, business change rarely belongs to SAP alone. Initiatives span SAP, integrations, analytics platforms, and digital front ends. As a result, requirements, user stories, and delivery tasks increasingly need to be planned, prioritized, and tracked in a way that reflects the full scope of enterprise change.
SAP-centric tooling such as SAP Cloud ALM provides valuable SAP-specific context, including process scope, readiness insight, and traceability to SAP Best Practices content. Enterprise delivery platforms such as Jira or Azure DevOps excel at managing backlogs, user stories, sprint execution, and cross-platform dependencies.
An integrated model brings these strengths together. By connecting Cloud ALM with Jira or Azure DevOps through bidirectional integration, teams can plan and execute work in their system of choice while maintaining continuous alignment with SAP processes and system context. SAP work moves in parallel with the rest of the value stream, leadership retains a coherent view of delivery, and governance is preserved without forcing all execution into a single tool.
SAP delivery works best when requirements and execution move at the same pace as the rest of the enterprise.
Testing and Validation: Maintaining SAP Assurance in an Integrated Lifecycle
SolMan’s Test Suite capabilities are fully preserved in modern SAP ALM architectures.
SAP Solution Manager’s Test Suite established a strong foundation for SAP testing by tying validation directly to business processes, transports, and release scope. That level of assurance remains essential and is fully preserved in modern SAP ALM architectures.
SAP Cloud ALM provides SAP-native test orchestration aligned to business processes and release scope, and integrates directly with Tricentis to support both structured manual testing and scalable automated regression testing. This combination replaces the capabilities historically delivered by the SolMan Test Suite without introducing gaps in coverage or control. Tricentis also serves as an enterprise testing platform, supporting SAP-native integrations alongside broader end-to-end testing needs.
Leading organizations preserve SAP-specific testing where it adds the most value, while embedding those results into a broader validation process. SAP-native test execution and automation are orchestrated through Cloud ALM, then integrated into enterprise delivery workflows managed in Jira or Azure DevOps. This allows SAP validation to remain rigorous and business-process aware, while contributing directly to a unified view of release readiness across the full application landscape.
SolMan’s Test Suite capabilities are fully preserved in modern SAP ALM architectures.
Transports and Release Control: Closing the Gaps Left by ChaRM
ChaRM-grade discipline still matters, but the execution model must evolve.
Solution Manager’s ChaRM enforced disciplined SAP transport governance through sequencing, approvals, and auditability. For many organizations, it became the backbone of SAP release control, and its retirement raises legitimate concerns about preserving stability and compliance.
SAP Cloud ALM provides a modern foundation for SAP change, but it does not fully replace ChaRM’s end-to-end transport governance, particularly in complex landscapes or when SAP delivery must align with enterprise release processes. Manual workarounds such as spreadsheets and naming conventions are often used to compensate, but they do not scale and reintroduce risk.
The integrated model closes this gap by embedding SAP transport governance directly into enterprise delivery workflows. Using CoreALM transport management integrations for ServiceNow, Jira, and Azure DevOps, SAP transports are governed as part of the same approval and release flows that manage change across the enterprise.
With this approach, SAP-specific controls remain explicit and auditable, while execution becomes faster and more predictable. The rigor ChaRM provided is preserved, but SAP delivery now operates in step with non-SAP releases rather than as a separate exception.
ChaRM-grade discipline still matters, but the execution model must evolve.
Operational Monitoring: Preserving SAP Visibility Within Enterprise Operations
SAP monitoring remains essential, but it must align with enterprise operations.
Solution Manager alerting historically provided early warning for SAP outages and bottlenecks. SolMan’s Focused Insights capability extended this by delivering consolidated operational dashboards across technical health, end-user experience, and business process monitoring. For organizations that rely on them, these capabilities remain mission-critical.
SAP Cloud ALM includes out-of-the-box monitoring and dashboards, but it does not always meet operational requirements, especially for on-premises landscapes. In those cases, SAP’s recommended path is to adopt SAP Focused Run. While effective, this approach introduces additional components into the operational toolchain.
The more fundamental question, however, is where incidents are understood and managed. Failures increasingly span integrations, extensions, and dependent services, making SAP-only operational views insufficient for troubleshooting, prioritization, and SLA management. SAP-native monitoring must remain intact, but alerts cannot remain isolated.
In this operating model, SAP tools continue to detect SAP issues with the required depth and speed, while enterprise operations platforms correlate and manage incidents across systems. SAP visibility and accountability are preserved, service levels are protected, and operational control extends across the full value chain rather than stopping at the SAP boundary.
SAP monitoring remains essential, but it must align with enterprise operations.
Conclusion
Solution Manager’s retirement ends an SAP-centric operating model, but not the need for SAP-grade control.
Solution Manager’s retirement does not signal the end of disciplined SAP lifecycle management. It signals the end of an SAP-only operating model that no longer reflects how enterprises deliver and run technology.
Across requirements, testing, transport governance, and operations, the capabilities SAP leaders relied on in SolMan still matter. What changes is how those capabilities are implemented and connected. SAP-native controls remain where SAP depth is required, while enterprise platforms provide the coordination, visibility, and flow needed to manage change across systems.
Organizations that approach this transition thoughtfully avoid two extremes. They neither cling to SolMan-era architecture nor strip away controls in the name of simplification. Instead, they adopt an integrated lifecycle model that preserves SAP rigor, aligns with enterprise delivery and operations, and supports continuous transformation.
Done correctly, SAP does not become harder to govern after SolMan. It becomes easier to operate as part of a modern, end-to-end enterprise platform.
