SAP customers are navigating a period of significant change. Of course, there’s the transition to Cloud ERP and the scheduled end of standard support options for ECC in 2027 – these are well known. Basis professionals will be familiar with changes in support for Solution Manager and its components including monitoring and change management. Landscape Management has been formally discontinued after 2027. The natural assumption is Cloud ALM fills the gap.
SAP positions Cloud ALM as the go-to ALM platform for all customers, and for cloud-first organizations running straightforward deployments, it can be a solid fit. But SAP’s own documentation makes clear a subtle and important nuance: Cloud ALM is designed primarily for cloud-centric customers with small on-premises footprints. Cloud ALM is not a direct replacement for Solution Manager, nor does it attempt to be.
Large customers often plan a full journey to Cloud ERP measured in years. During this time, hybrid environments with on-premises systems remain critical. For the large enterprises running hybrid landscapes – with years of customization, multiple ERP variants, and complex migration timelines – this can be a challenging point of transition. For some customers with extensive legacy estates, Cloud ALM alone may leave meaningful gaps in operational coverage compared to Solution Manager and LaMa.
Mix up
Let us be clear – this isn’t a criticism of Cloud ALM. It’s recognition that most SAP customers live in a world more complex than any single tool was designed to handle. And that’s exactly where a complementary approach creates the most value.
Forward-thinking organizations are discovering the benefits of a hybrid transition, incrementally migrating the multiple ECC landscapes typical of a large enterprise. And the same is true with basis, too. Any major tooling migration or transition has the opportunity for operational disruption, and as important as SAP business continuity is for larger firms, many are considering incremental migration for ALM solutions, too.
Recognizing this, the value of integrating multiple solutions into a “better together” story becomes compelling for large SAP customers. The approach effectively blends Cloud ALM for ERP Operations with solutions ideal for hybrid SAP Ops, providing ideal operational coverage for the entire SAP estate.
Operational smoothies
Rather than treating Cloud ALM and third-party solutions as an either-or decision, forward-thinking organizations are combining them.
One of the most impactful integration points is multi-tenant management. By design, Cloud ALM assumes each customer has a single Cloud ALM tenant and relationship with SAP. This is often the case with Cloud ERP only customers, but less common with larger enterprises and not common at all with Managed Services Providers. With Avantra, the customer creates a single management solution across all Cloud ALM tenants, and adds on-premises management, too, all from a single point of control. The approach has the dual benefit of leveraging Cloud ALM while maintaining a single management interface for operations teams.
Beyond multi-tenancy, Avantra brings a no-code automation engine capable of extending automation in Cloud ERP Private and legacy environments. Where Cloud ALM integrates with SAP Build Process Automation for business process orchestration, it doesn’t extend that automation into day-to-day operations tasks like system refreshes, HotNews patching, or certificate renewals. Avantra’s 300+ prebuilt checks and template-based automation cover these scenarios out of the box, and its low-code/pro-code engine lets teams build custom workflows for anything else their operations require.
Unified monitoring across hybrid landscapes is another area where the combination shines. Cloud ALM’s monitoring capabilities are solid for cloud-hosted SAP systems, but support for on-premise environments is limited — requiring additional setup, connectivity, and in some cases, Focused Run as a bridge.
Avantra monitors SAP wherever it runs: on-premise, private cloud, public cloud, and BTP. It extends visibility into non-SAP components natively, without requiring end users to instrument applications with OpenTelemetry or perform manual configuration for each system. This addresses a critical gap as organizations face changes in ALM solution requirements; Avantra effectively provides the continuity and highly scalable monitoring capabilities that high-end hybrid customers need and does so transparently across any SAP architecture and runtime.
For organizations that depend on ITSM integration, Avantra offers native connectors for ServiceNow (including incident management, event management, CMDB, and workflow), and Slack. Cloud ALM’s ITSM integration is more limited, and for operations teams that need automated event management flowing into established incident response processes, this is a significant extension of capabilities.
Finally, there’s SLA monitoring and reporting. Cloud ALM provides service-level reporting, but Avantra adds flexible real-time dashboards today, automated SLA alerting, and AI-driven root cause analysis through Avantra AIR. For organizations making customer-facing SLA commitments this level of visibility and control matters.
The perfect pairing
The strongest argument for pairing Cloud ALM with Avantra isn’t about replacing one with the other — it’s about what becomes possible when they work together. Cloud ALM provides the ALM foundation for the future of SAP: project management, deployment orchestration, and cloud-native lifecycle management. Avantra extends that foundation to where many enterprises are today: hybrid landscapes, legacy system dependencies, complex automation requirements, and the need for a single view across everything.
Together, organizations get Cloud ALM’s alignment with SAP’s strategic direction and Avantra’s depth in operational automation, monitoring, and control. They get a platform that works for the cloud-only future SAP envisions and the hybrid present that most customers live in. And they get a continuity bridge to keep operations running smoothly as Solution Manager, Focused Run, and Landscape Manager fade into the sunset.
For SAP customers navigating the transition ahead, the smartest path forward may not be choosing one tool over another. It may be choosing both. This combination ensures that as legacy SAP tools sunset, your operations remain stable, automated, and future-proof.
To find out more about Avantra and how it can enable you to manage complex hybrid landscapes, explore our Platform pages or get in touch with one of our SAP experts for a customized demo and conversation.