Anyone working in the SAP market in 2025 is aware of two big topics: migration to cloud-based ERP and the end of many long-used tools for managing SAP operations including Focused Run, Landscape Manager and Solution Manager. Both are impossible to ignore. Cloud-based ERP presents a new era of business software possibilities, and with it the opportunities and complexities of migration, transformation, and leveraging the elastic capacity and scalability of cloud-based designs. But right behind it, the question becomes “how are we going to run and manage this?”
In this blog, we’ll explore explore the market dynamics and the challenges of supporting the most complex SAP customers during this time of transition and change – including keeping existing systems running until new architectures are fully online and legacy systems are ready for retirement–and how Avantra works to tackle those challenges for complex global enterprises.
According to studies by SAPinsider, Gartner and others, cost, time and complexity remain key concerns and barriers for cloud ERP projects, despite the scheduled end of support for many older versions of core ERP and supporting tooling providing major motivators for the migration. For large enterprises, project timelines are measured in years or even decades for a full migration and retirement of existing systems. And, in many cases, existing systems work well, so business justification must be built on the advantages of a cloud-based approach, and often not on cost savings alone.
So successful transition programs depend on the combination of support for existing systems now, a capability for business continuity during transition, present support for the adoption of new technology incrementally, and the ability to manage the whole solution elegantly. During the project, the mix of systems and architectures will change, as might the end of support dates from SAP for core software, all creating a very dynamic and yet many years long project.
With Avantra 25, we set out to enhance our existing solution for SAP Operations with new capabilities for customers needing to secure and operate existing systems, transitional environments, and ultimately manage the complexity of cloud-based ERP systems after transformation. We already knew the requirements for existing operators of large-scale SAP estates well – it’s what we do – and in the process we discovered what customers who will transition to cloud-based ERP will require; hint: the requirements for operational solutions to run SAP are different for large enterprises transitioning from traditional on-prem ECC and S/4 than what a new implementations beginning in the cloud would need.
First and foremost, the transition requires confidence in SAP Operations — from ECC to S/4 and beyond. There will be a generational mix of software releases and underlying infrastructure, and in most cases transformation projects will be incremental, requiring unified management across legacy, transitional and future-state architecture throughout the process.
This helped inform our understanding, and created our vision for AIOps in SAP:
In general, we believe customers who are adopting new SAP technologies will find standard tooling and support good – until legacy systems and high complexity are considered. For example, a new SAP customer with a deployment of RISE Public Cloud and several customizations developed in BTP will be quite happy with Cloud ALM and standard BTP management tools. However, if the customer requires a single view of their entire SAP estate, which may include ECC, S/4HANA on Prem, RISE and new BTP development, all running concurrently, a solution with a broader scope of functionality is advised.
One of the most compelling benefits of moving to cloud ERP is new technologies for integration, application development and AI. Of course, SAP’s BTP platform covers much more than just this, but many customers will have their first experience using the BTP platform with the new Business Integration Suite and application development tools designed to help move legacy customizations from the ERP core to integrated application runtime environments supported with cloud technology. In addition to supporting the clean core model and simplifying future core ERP upgrades, these cloud technologies provide elastic capacity and low-code/no-code rapid development tools.
Adoption of BTP and cloud technologies is well documented, but less information is available on managing BTP, especially when BTP is deployed incrementally – the typical case with large enterprise migration projects. This creates a need for the management of SAP across technologies, and especially unifying SAP operations across eras, environments, and enterprises. So, while BTP itself comes with management tools specifically designed for the BTP environment, migration projects, incremental adoption and existing ERP systems all create needs for a more comprehensive view, and some new requirements for helping make the most of BTP investments.
Most BTP observability tasks fall neatly in three categories: FinOps, or managing BTP spend and utilization optimally; SecOps, or ensuring compliance with security policy and configuration while providing support for audit and monitoring for security risks; and SysOps, providing observability for system performance and metrics, helping ensure application availability. Each of these key areas has a set of common requirements and considerations for enterprise customers.
There’s an old joke about the cloud: everything is cheap until the bill comes! Like any cloud system, BTP is priced on a consumption basis, often the intersection of base credits from a contracted consumption commitment and potentially overage fees for volumes beyond contracted amounts. And, while an unexpected bill is alarming, from a business perspective an under-utilized asset is just as expensive: identifying underutilized services helps optimize cloud spend to areas where the resources would be beneficial to the business.
When ensuring the compliance and security of cloud services, look for solutions with real-time insights into system health, configuration, and security posture – expect live, active change in the environment, and manage with this as a base expectation. We advise continuous monitoring for vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and compliance gaps, ensuring that BTP environments meet industry standards and regulatory requirements. In addition to change monitoring, live system monitoring should provide automated alerts and detailed reports for potential threats and risks proactively based on transactional traffic.
For SysOps, we recommend tracking the availability, status, and responsiveness of cloud service instances and applications in addition to basic monitoring of key BTP metrics. Since BTP usually runs integrated with a core ERP back end, monitoring connectivity between BTP and backend systems like S/4HANA or ERP identifies issues with application availability in the event of a loss of connectivity. Custom health checks and API-based monitoring allow deeper insight into specific BTP services and extensions. Alerts and visual dashboards help teams detect issues early and ensure stable, optimized performance in the BTP environment.
The exercise of understanding the modern SAP enterprise and unique requirements informed Avantra 25 and created our focus and strategy for supporting the most complex, advanced and sophisticated SAP users in the market. What we learned with Avantra 25 and now 25.1 will continue to be refined in Avantra 26.
Exciting things to watch for:
We are thrilled that with Avantra 25, we are bringing Avantra functionality to cloud ERP and supporting customers across their entire transformation journey. With Avantra, now you’re really running.
Please take the time to reach out and speak with us about your cloud ERP journey – we would love to hear from you. For our customers, your ideas are welcome at ideas.avantra.com or email us at support@avantra.com or speak to your customer success manager.
If you want to learn more about Avantra, speak with one of our experts to find out how Avantra can help transform your SAP landscape.