solution MAnager Insight White Paper.indd

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What Is It & Why Do You Need to Upgrade?

White Paper

SAP Solution Manager 7.2

Innovate

Align with SAP’s digitization concept and enable the SAP ACTIVATE methodology

Choose to implement the features and functions that require the least amount of setup time while still returning significant value

Solution Manager 7.2 is designed to facilitate the delivery and adoption of innovations

2 itelligencegroup.com/us

Emery Streit is currently the Practice

Manager for the SAP Solution Manager

program at itelligence North America. He

specializes in support processes/tools

for SAP Centers of Excellence. He

has over 15 years of experience with

IT Service Management and ITIL

processes, governance, and SAP Solution

Manager. Emery currently works with

customers to help identify ways to improve

their Application Lifecycle Management

processes and tools. His experience

includes both SAP and Non-SAP service

management along with being on the

consultant side and the customer side.

This broad background helps him see a

customer’s whole picture and develop the

most effective plans for success

About the Author

Emery StreitPractice Manager, SAP Solution [email protected]

3itelligencegroup.com/us

Table of Contents

1.| Why Solution Manager 7.2 4

2.| New Concepts and Terminology in 7.2 6 Portfolio to Project Requirement to Deploy Detect to Correct Request to Fulfill

3.| Solution Manager 7.2 Quick Win Opportunities 8 System Monitoring Change and Transport System (CTS+) Scope & Effort Analyzer Early Watch Alert Reports Transport Execution Analysis UPL/SCMON Activation

4.| Top 5 Reasons to Upgrade to Solution Manager 7.2 11


1.| Why Solution Manager 7.2?

Many SAP customers are aware of SAP Solution Manager because it is a tool that

facilitates communication between SAP and its customers. Functionalities like

Maintenance Optimizer, Early Watch Alert Reports, and System Monitoring have

typically been the extent of what small to medium size customers would use in

Solution Manager. However, SAP has designed Solution Manager 7.2 to not only

support managing your existing IT landscape (Run), but also facilitate the delivery

and adoption of innovations (Build). This new focus, along with enhancements to

the overall look, feel, and functionality, makes 7.2 very compelling to all types of

customers.

What are the main challenges for IT organizations in managing business applications?

Most CIO’s would provide a list similar to this:

n Run Better – We need to make sure that the business applications are up

and running such that you can ensure business continuity for the lines of

business while leveraging best practices for Application Lifecycle

Management (ALM).

n Innovate Better – The business will always request new functionalities and

new capabilities from IT because of growth or change in business

requirements. We must deploy these changes (on the latest technology) to

enable innovation while maintaining business continuity.

n Time to Market – We must take action to ensure a fast time to market for

our innovations and system maintenance. We do this through reducing

complexity and leveraging in memory computing, mobile,

and cloud strategies.

n Quality – Throughout all of our initiatives and activities we must always

maintain a high level of quality. Go-lives should not encounter

disruptions and we must ensure our solution scales

into production environments.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, these challenges and goals conflict with each other in

many situations. Many IT organizations struggle to harmonize all of the challenges

together. This is where SAP Solution Manager 7.2 comes into play. It is the

orchestration platform to support all of these challenges along with all other aspects

of ALM.

There are many activities that are covered in ALM. There are also many tools that

can support them. Some companies choose to incorporate a “best of breed” strategy

by adopting multiple tools to support each scenario. However, this strategy has one

glaring weakness: they are not integrated! Many companies who encounter “tool

islands” (Figure 1) struggle with ensuring efficiencies and avoiding redundancies.

This is avoided with an integrated approach such as Solution Manager.


Let’s assume you have a separate tool to model your core business processes. Can you

then now re-use the process models for other activities, such as changing the business

process, testing if the business process has been configured correctly, or monitoring if

the business process is running well? The answer is most likely no; but with Solution

Manager 7.2 you absolutely can because all of these functions are built into the tool

(the single source of truth).

Other disadvantages of third party tools include (but are not limited to):

n Higher license costs – Solution Manager is free!

n Higher maintenance costs

n Required system specific knowledge and administration

n Interfaces

Documents

SolutionDocumentation

Tickets

Incident Management

Code / ConfigureDocuments

Build, ReleaseDeploy Management

Process Models

Modeling

Solution Configuration

EnvironmentManagement

Auto Test Scripts

Test Automation

User Training

TrainingManagement

Testing

Test Management

Monitoring Root Cause

SolutionOperations

Job Doc. Scheduling

JobManagement

Figure 1: Tool Islands


2.| New Concepts and Terminology in 7.2

In the past, Solution Manager offered many different functions but failed to articulate

the value of each piece of functionality. Now, the 7.2 upgrade has streamlined its

functions and categorized them into 4 key value chains across the complete application

lifecycle. These value chains are performed by all IT departments, big or small, and help

articulate to your CIO the true value of Solution Manager in your SAP landscape.

Portfolio to Project

Customers have strategic initiatives to implement new solutions that support business

models. Customers using functionality within Portfolio to Project can do a high

level estimate of capacity, skills, and efforts from the decision to start a project until

the project end. The scenario provides a unified viewpoint across PMO, enterprise

architecture, and service portfolio. It improves data quality for decision making and

provides KPIs and roadmaps to improve business communication.

Requirement to Deploy

Customers can break down those strategic initiatives into requirements. Customers using

functionality within Requirements to Deploy can collaboratively gather demands of the

lines of business, design and develop the solution, test it, and deploy the changes into the

productive solution.

Detect to Correct

Inevitably, incidents occur in the productive environment. Customers utilizing

functionality within Detect to Correct can monitor systems, analyze incidents, detect

the root cause, correct the situation, and prevent it from happening again. It enables end-

to-end visibility to identify issues before they affect users and reduce the mean time to

repair.

Request to Fulfill

Customers using functionality in Request to Fulfill will catalog, request, and fulfill IT

services. This enables IT organizations to transition to a service broker model. You can

manage and measure fulfillments which leads to efficient control of subscriptions and

total cost of services.


One of the bigger concept/terminology changes in 7.2 is in the area of project and

solution documentation. Prior versions of Solution Manager incorporated a dual concept

of solutions and projects. In 7.2, that dual concept is replaced by the new Solution

Documentation.

This new concept brings new terminology to get used to:

n Solution - the Solution is the sum of a company’s systems, applications, and

processes. It acts as a container for versions of solution documentation.

In almost all cases, only one single solution is needed.

n Projects – Projects now replace the old underdone Project Manager functionality

with a full Project Management suite built right into Solution Manager.

n Branches – Branches act as versions for your Solution Documentation. A

production branch and a maintenance branch are required. The branch setup

should be driven by the system (transport) tracks and the planned customer

releases (ex. Maintenance, Development Production).

Portfolio to Project

Requirement toDeploy

Detect toCorrect

Request toFulfill

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Figure 2: SAP Solution Manager 7.2 Functionality


Orchestration tools often have a variety of functionality offered. Often times,

customers will not be able to implement all functionalities at once (big bang) as

this would be too much effort and too much change at once. Customers will instead

choose to implement the features and functions that require the least amount of

setup time while still returning significant value. The following items are seen as “low

hanging fruits” for Solution Manager implementations.

System Monitoring

With system monitoring, you do not need to wait until a disruption happens.

Proactive monitoring tries to detect upcoming problems before they become critical

for the business. An alert is raised whenever a critical threshold is exceeded. This

allows you to react even before the business identifies an impact.

System Monitoring and Alerting is based on a common Monitoring and Alerting

Infrastructure in SAP Solution Manager (MAI). This infrastructure collects data

from connected systems and makes it centrally available in a unified alert inbox.

This ensures errors and warnings are detected and automated alerts ensure the right

people are being notified at the right time. Customers usually can get most of the

monitoring configured in a day. Providing faster daily checks could repay your time

within months.

Additionally, you will receive the following quality benefits:

n Transparency over your SAP system status

n Detect issues proactively and resolve them before business continuity or

end users are affected

n Planned downtimes can be reduced by about 30% on average

n Standardization and automation of operations processes makes

application operations much more efficient

Change and Transport System (CTS+)

In integrated system landscapes, it is important to manage all changes in a central

system. This is the only way to synchronously execute changes that affect more than

one production system (i.e. simultaneous changes in the SAP NetWeaver portal and

in the SAP ERP back-end system). You can use Solution Manager as a communication

system for the enhanced Change and Transport System (CTS+) that automatically

collects all changes (both ABAP and non-ABAP) and records them in transport

requests.

3.| Solution Manager 7.2 Quick Win Opportunities


You can integrate several development environments such that you use just one

transport tool for multiple content types. Standardizing the change management

process eases execution and helps to avoid mistakes. It takes about 12 hours per

landscape to setup and has the added benefit of simplifying the transport process

such that it can save time for your core teams by allowing help desk or other

employees to move transports while providing improved change control and stability

of your systems.

Scope & Effort Analyzer

Most customers are very familiar with the challenges of applying enhancement

packages provided by SAP. The actual application of the software is not such a big

ordeal. However, depending on your organization, the time and effort involved with

identifying the customizations that need adjusted and the testing to ensure business

continuity can be significant and hard to predict. This is where Solution Manager’s

Scope & Effort Analyzer (SEA) feature can provide value.

SEA provides transparency into what customizations are in use and can assess impact

and effort of resolving any issues when implementing enhancement packages. It also

can provide insight into what effort and timing is involved with the testing of the

remediation performed. All of this information is provided before you apply any

software in your landscape.

The benefits for this information is clear:

n Early upgrade information before deployment of SAP SP / EHP

n No additional usage or license costs for customers with SAP Enterprise

Support contract

n Calculated efforts for required ABAP code adjustments and regression tests

increases the efficacy of your planning and scoping processes

In order for SEA to see a customer’s usage data, Usage & Procedure Logging must be

enabled for at least 3 months prior to running the report. Once a customer has a good

amount of data captured, SEA can be setup and run in a day.

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Early Watch Alert Reports

The Early Watch Alert Report provides information on the health of your SAP system,

including other useful advice. This report saves customers time by gathering data

that is found throughout the other SAP systems and compiling it all together in one

report. The setup and configuration of this in Solution Manager typically only takes

4-6 hours per system.

Transport Execution Analysis

Bringing changes into your productive systems is always accompanied by risk. Any

change may disrupt your productive business. Therefore, it is crucial to identify

risks and mitigate them. It is often difficult to identify existing risks due to a lack of

transparency.

These questions can help you to identify potential risk factors:

How many transport requests caused errors in the production environment?

How many emergency changes have been executed?

What are the transport backlogs in the development and production system?

How consistent is my transport landscape?

UPL/SCMON Activation

It is always a challenge for every SAP system owner to know what is really going on in

their installed systems:

n What kind of code procedures are executed and how often?

n Is there a relation between the time frame of execution and the number

of executions?

What we are looking for is a technology without system performance impact, with

a high level of accuracy, and the capability to track almost at runtime dynamically

generated and executed code language elements. Usage Procedure Logging (UPL)

and SCMON provide just that and they are activated directly from Solution Manager

without installation of additional software packages or difficult activation processes.

Additionally, in order to enable some of the advanced analytical functionality in

Solution Manager, such as Scope & Effort Analyzer and Change Impact Analysis, you

must activate this. Typically it can be enabled within one business day for a system.


Solution Manager 7.2 brings unique functionality and additional business value to

both your RUN SAP processes and your BUILD SAP processes. Below are the top 5

reasons to upgrade your existing Solution Manager system to 7.2.

1. New and Improved Functionality

Among the many improvements in 7.2, SAP has completely redesigned

Process Management. In this version, an integrated graphical BPMN process editor

is included. The editor is in line with many of the other process modeling tools

and is completely integrated into the overall suite which allows it to provide and

use data existing in other “modules.”

2. New User Experience

Let’s face it, Solution Manager has never been “easy to use.” There were many

work centers for each function, you had to know the right transaction to run,

and they were all in SAP GUI. However, in Solution Manager 7.2, a Fiori

role-based central Launchpad replaces all other work center concepts. It is

very easy to use, gives customers a central access point to all areas, and

includes several platform independent apps. Additionally, informative

dashboards are now included that span across all of the modules.

3. S/4HANA Deployment Enablement

Solution Manager 7.2 was made for S/4HANA. It is aligned with SAP’s digitization

concept and helps enable the SAP ACTIVATE methodology. Here are 3 ways that

Solution Manager 7.2 enables your S/4HANA deployment:

n Best Practices – Solution Manager can automatically import the SAP

Best Practice process flows, configuration guides, building blocks, and

test scripts directly from the Roadmap Viewer and into the Process

Management module (complete with process hierarchy). Customers

immediately have a single source of truth for all documentation and

accelerators for your S/4HANA implementation.

n Project Management – Project Management within Solution Manager 7.2

can automatically import the SAP standard methodology, ACTIVATE,

directly into the system. This allows customers to utilize a task-

based platform that is integrated and contains the gold standard for

S/4HANA implementation methodology.

n Requirements/Fit Gap Analysis – Solution Manager is the only tool that

allows customers to directly modify the imported best practice process

flows. From Solution Manager 7.2, customers can perform a Fit Gap

Analysis against the best practice and seamlessly raise requirements if

modifications to the business process are required.

4.| Top 5 Reasons to Upgrade to Solution Manager 7.2


4. New Technologies

SAP has upgraded its technology stacks in Solution Manager 7.2. The following

areas have been updated to ensure the efficient and scalable technologies are

utilized:

n HANA – SAP now offers Solution Manager on the HANA database.

Customers may still utilize classical databases. However, the license for

HANA with Solution Manager 7.2 is completely free. Customers may

choose to utilize HANA if they are considering a HANA strategy in the

future. It is a good first system to build experience running HANA or if you

would simply like to reduce the costs of other database licenses. Customers

may even see some increased speed in the area of text searches as HANA

will replace TREX for embedded search functionality.

n Split Stack – Solution Manager 7.2 now runs on a split stack (ABAP and

Java). Split stacks are easier to administer, more flexible, scalable, and have

higher availability.

n Netweaver – Netweaver is upgraded to 7.4 which brings stability and

functionality upgrades.

n CRM – CRM is upgraded from EHP 1 to EHP 3.

n SAP UI5 – UI5 is utilized throughout Solution Manager to replace all flash

based areas and some webdynpro.

5. New Maintenance Cycle

Hopefully by now you have heard that mainstream maintenance for Solution

Manager 7.1 ended December 31, 2017. Does that mean your 7.1 system stopped

working on New Year’s Day? No, 7.1 will continue to work. However, should you

encounter a new bug you will have difficulties getting it resolved (no new notes or

support packs) without a consulting contract from SAP. It is highly recommended

you upgrade to 7.2 to extend your maintenance cycle to 2025.

itelligence North America Headquarters | 10856 Reed Hartman Highway, Cincinnati, OH 45242 • 1-866-422-8858 • [email protected]

About itelligence

In the digital age, you need an IT partner you can rely on. Someone who understands the digital and real-life challenges of your industry and helps you rethink your business. A partner who is with you every step of the way.

With over 25 years’ experience, itelligence knows SAP software inside out. We work closely with our clients to identify their specific needs and fulfil them. Numerous SAP awards, certifications, and our SAP Platinum Partner status are testament to our success. From consulting to implementation and managed services, we have over 7,000 employees with the expertise to take your business further.

As part of the NTT Data Group, we can draw upon a global network of over 9,000 SAP specialists. And our presence in 24 countries around the world ensures we are always close to your business. What’s more, our strong ties to SAP mean we stay up to speed with the latest innovations and can help you get more from them. No matter what industry you are in – we are the IT partner for your digital transformation. Think ahead. Go beyond. Visit www.itelligencegroup.com for more information or email us at [email protected].

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