The 2027 end of support for ECC may consume the oxygen in the room lately, but a less covered topic might be more critical: the end of support for Solution Manager has the potential for a larger-near term impact on large enterprises and SAP migration projects. This event is potentially more disruptive than the end of support for ECC by directly impacting the ability to continue IT operations for SAP.
SAP’s end-of-support decisions, aimed at incentivizing the move to Cloud ERP, have consequences for customers using Solution Manager functionality. The end of support for Solution Manager – included with SAP ECC as part of current maintenance, and continued availability depending on existing on-prem SAP maintenance agreements – creates exposure for any customer using Solution Manager today.
Those impacts are very real, as Solution Manager covers a lot of ground with SAP operations. Making it worse, even customers on extended maintenance through 2030 will lose some portions of Solution Manager in 2027 per SAP Note 3255311.
The picture differs by product, and the differences matter for planning.
Focused Build and Focused Insights are included in the usage rights of Solution Manager and follow its maintenance conditions. Mainstream maintenance ends in 2027.
SAP Landscape Management 3.0 reaches end of mainstream maintenance on 31 December 2027. SAP has confirmed no extended maintenance phase, and SAP Landscape Management Cloud has been discontinued.
SAP Focused Run sits outside this timeline. Its maintenance conditions are independent of Solution Manager, and SAP has committed to mainstream maintenance beyond 2030.
For Basis teams, the end of Solution Manager might be the bigger story of 2027. The end-of-support announcement and the absence of recent roadmap commitments make clear that Solution Manager is effectively end-of-life already.
What’s the exposure?
Solution Manager includes a broad range of functionality around SAP IT operations, creating a potential for disruption in many SAP deployments. Test case management, risk-based testing, test data management, technical monitoring, change/transport management, security, process management, infrastructure management, landscape management and more.
Frustratingly, the successor to Solution Manager, Cloud ALM, isn’t intended as a solution with feature parity to Solution Manager: the design is specifically Cloud ERP centric, and not intended for large on-premise estates or complex hybrid environments mixing SAP deployment topologies. This leaves many enterprises with a daunting challenge for the gap left by the end of support for ECC and Solution Manager, but before a full decommissioning of all ECC environments becomes possible.
So… what to do?
No one solution replaces all Solution Manager functionality in an ECC environment. Many solutions available, however, cover a specialized segment of capability and often more comprehensively with better functionality. With an understanding of the most important aspects of Solution Manager coverage to a given enterprise, a choice can be made for a replacement solution, and one likely to have additional technical and operational cost benefits.
Observe. Optimize. Innovate.
Avantra covers many key aspects of SAP IT operations, including improvements on Solution Manager components for monitoring, landscape management, ITSM integration, and Security Notes / Hot News implementation.
Avantra extends Solution Manager today and works alongside SAP Focused Run. For SAP Landscape Management, where mainstream maintenance ends on 31 December 2027 with no extended maintenance planned, Avantra provides a direct migration path. Expect improvement in the following areas:
- Monitoring across on-prem, hyperscaler, and RISE, with AIOps for automatic, real- time observability far beyond simple thresholds.
- ITSM Integration with enterprise solutions including Service Now.
- Landscape Management tasks and automation.
- Automation for many SAP operations tasks with a robust workflow engine built in.
- System Refresh – including automatic execution of pre and post copy activities often accelerating refresh by 10x or more.
- Automating Hot News and Security Notes, essentially eliminating evaluation/applicability research and verification and automating deployment in many situations.
This isn’t a complete list – there’s much more Avantra does for SAP IT operations! And, for other portions of Solution Manager – including Testing, Data & Change Management – we have great partners and we’re happy to speak with you about them.
Where SAP Cloud ALM fits
SAP positions Cloud ALM as the successor to Solution Manager. Its design targets Cloud ERP, not large on-premise estates or hybrid environments that mix deployment models. As you adopt SAP Cloud ALM alongside or after Solution Manager, Avantra supplies the monitoring depth, landscape automation, and cross-system operations Cloud ALM does not cover natively. The two run together. Cloud ALM manages the application lifecycle for your Cloud ERP scope. Avantra runs technical monitoring, automated daily checks, and operations automation across every system you still operate yourself, on-premise, on hyperscalers, and under RISE with SAP.
Key facts
- SAP Solution Manager 7.2 mainstream maintenance ends 31 December 2027.
- Customers with SAP Business Suite 7 extended maintenance receive Solution Manager extended maintenance to 31 December 2030 at no additional cost. Functions outside the covered list, including technical monitoring, end in 2027 (SAP Note 3255311).
- Focused Build and Focused Insights follow Solution Manager’s maintenance dates.
- SAP Landscape Management (LaMa) 3.0 mainstream maintenance also ends 31 December 2027, with no extended phase announced (SAP Note 3375877).
- SAP Focused Run has its own maintenance timeline, independent of Solution Manager.
- Cloud ALM covers application lifecycle management for Cloud ERP. It is not a one-to-one match for SolMan’s on-premise operations scope.
Maintenance timeline by product
Solution Manager is one of several SAP operations tools with a 2027 date, and the dates differ by product.
| Product | Mainstream maintenance ends | Extended option | What it means for SAP operations |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAP Solution Manager 7.2 | 31 Dec 2027 | To 31 Dec 2030 at no additional cost for customers with SAP Business Suite 7 extended maintenance; functions outside the covered list, including technical monitoring, end in 2027 (SAP Note 3255311) | Monitoring, alerting and daily checks need a target owner before 2027. ITSM and ChaRM are covered to 2030 under extended maintenance |
| Focused Build and Focused Insights | Follows Solution Manager | Follows Solution Manager | Dashboards and project tooling built on SolMan follow the same timeline |
| SAP LaMa 3.0 | 31 Dec 2027 | None announced (SAP Note 3375877) | System copy, refresh and start/stop automation need a new home on the same date as SolMan |
| SAP Focused Run | Independent of Solution Manager; SAP states mainstream maintenance continues beyond 2027 | Not tied to SolMan | Can stay in place; Avantra runs alongside it |
| SAP Cloud ALM | Cloud service, updated continuously | None needed | SAP’s designated ALM successor, designed for Cloud ERP scope |
Where each Solution Manager area goes
No single tool covers everything Solution Manager does, so most transition plans split SolMan’s work by area. Avantra covers the operations areas; Cloud ALM and specialist tools cover lifecycle, change and testing.
| Solution Manager area | SAP Cloud ALM | Avantra | Specialist tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical monitoring and alerting | Health, integration and job monitoring for cloud services and on-premise ABAP systems; no coverage for non-ABAP systems | Covered: servers, databases, SAP systems and instances, and cloud services, on-premise or on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud; agentless monitoring for RISE with SAP and HEC | Not needed |
| Daily system checks | Partial | Covered: standard and custom checks run automatically, with dynamic thresholds | Not needed |
| Incident routing to ITSM | Partial | Covered: native ServiceNow incidents and events, plus REST and SOAP for other platforms | ITSM platform holds the tickets |
| SAP HotNews and Security Notes | Partial: Configuration and Security Analysis checks patch levels | Covered: downloads HotNews from SAP, calculates which systems each note applies to, and tracks implementation status per system | Not needed |
| Patching and upgrades | Not covered; maintenance planning runs through Maintenance Planner | Covered: automation templates for SPAM/SAINT, kernel upgrades and HANA patching | Not needed |
| Landscape automation (system refresh, start/stop) | Limited: via SAP Automation Pilot or SAP Build Process Automation | Covered: full ABAP system refresh, and start/stop for SAP systems, instances, databases and cloud servers | Not needed |
| Business process monitoring | Covered | Technical view: Business Services map a process to its checks across systems | Cloud ALM for process-level monitoring |
| Change and transport management (ChaRM) | Change and deployment management, without full ChaRM parity | Partial: automates transport imports; no ChaRM-style change workflow | Change and transport management tool |
| Test management | Covered | Not covered | Test automation tool for complex estates |
| Process documentation and project management | Covered | Not covered | Not needed for most teams |
Avantra integrates with SAP Cloud ALM. It maps Cloud ALM and SAP for Me systems to Avantra systems, shows Cloud ALM data alongside Avantra monitoring, and alerts on open SAP for Me support cases.
Some capabilities depend on the Avantra edition: HotNews analysis requires Enterprise Edition, start/stop requires Automation or Enterprise Edition, and automation templates require Automation, Cloud or Enterprise Edition.
Operational risks after Solution Manager
Most SolMan transition coverage focuses on change management. The operations risks get less attention and surface first, because monitoring and alerting run every day.
| Risk | What it means |
|---|---|
| Monitoring blind spots | Monitoring content stops getting mainstream updates, so newer kernels, databases and cloud services can fall outside coverage |
| Hybrid coverage gaps | Cloud ALM is designed around Cloud ERP and covers on-premise ABAP systems only in part; non-ABAP and infrastructure layers on-premise and on hyperscalers need explicit coverage from another tool |
| Daily checks without an owner | Health checks run through SolMan need a new tool, schedule and owner |
| Broken incident routing | Alerts that flow from SolMan into ServiceNow or another ITSM platform need re-pointing before cutover |
| Security Notes backlog | If note evaluation ran through SolMan, applicability research falls back to manual work |
| Landscape automation on the same deadline | LaMa mainstream maintenance ends on the same date as SolMan, so system copies and refreshes need a plan too |
| Lost operational history | Alert history and monitoring records held in SolMan need a retention plan for audits |
Three paths after Solution Manager
SAP teams are taking one of three paths. The right one depends on how much of the estate stays on-premise or on hyperscalers after 2027.
Path 1: Stay on Solution Manager under extended maintenance
Verdict: buys time to 2030 at no additional cost for customers with SAP Business Suite 7 extended maintenance, but it is a bridge, not a destination.
This suits teams with stable, well-documented SolMan processes and a migration already scheduled. Some functions, including technical monitoring, still end in 2027 under extended maintenance (SAP Note 3255311), so check which ones your team depends on before choosing this path. Pair it with a target architecture and a cutover date.
Path 2: Move to SAP Cloud ALM alone
Verdict: fits estates that are mostly Cloud ERP; leaves gaps for on-premise and hybrid operations.
Cloud ALM covers implementation, process management, testing and operations for Cloud ERP scope. Teams with a large on-premise or hyperscaler footprint will find technical monitoring, landscape automation and daily checks thinner than in SolMan.
Path 3: Run Cloud ALM alongside specialist tools
Verdict: fits mixed estates that run on-premise, hyperscaler and RISE with SAP systems side by side.
Cloud ALM handles application lifecycle management. Specialist tools cover what Cloud ALM doesn’t: Avantra for operations and monitoring across every system the team still runs, plus change and test tools where needed. Avantra integrates with Cloud ALM, so the two share one operational picture.
What Avantra does not cover
Avantra is an operations platform. Test management, ChaRM-style change management, process documentation and project management sit outside its scope. Avantra automates transport imports, but it does not run a change approval workflow. Cloud ALM covers several of these, and Avantra works with partners for the rest.
SAP SAFARI!
So, ride your Lama into the sunset, but don’t sweat Solution Manager’s end-of-life. While the end of support can present a challenge for ECC users planning to operate past 2027, Avantra provides a range of solutions generally more capable, more flexible and often with a lower total cost of operation than legacy SAP IT operations tooling. Now there’s an extra nudge to go ahead, dive in and improve.
Frequently Asked Questions
When does mainstream maintenance end for SAP Solution Manager?
SAP Solution Manager 7.2 mainstream maintenance ends on 31 December 2027. Customers with SAP Business Suite 7 extended maintenance receive Solution Manager extended maintenance to 31 December 2030 at no additional cost.
Can I keep using Solution Manager until 2030?
Yes, if your organization has SAP Business Suite 7 extended maintenance. Some functionality, including technical monitoring, still ends in 2027 (SAP Note 3255311). Check which functions your team relies on before planning around 2030.
Is SAP Cloud ALM the successor to Solution Manager?
SAP positions Cloud ALM as the successor to Solution Manager. Cloud ALM is designed for Cloud ERP, so teams with on-premise or hybrid landscapes typically add specialist tools for operations, change or testing.
Does Avantra work alongside SAP Cloud ALM?
Yes. Avantra integrates with Cloud ALM: Cloud ALM manages the application lifecycle for Cloud ERP, and Avantra runs technical monitoring, daily checks and operations automation across on-premise, hyperscaler and RISE with SAP systems.
What happens to SAP technical monitoring after 2027?
Monitoring set up in Solution Manager stops receiving mainstream updates after 2027, so coverage of newer releases and cloud services can fall behind. Teams either move monitoring to Cloud ALM for Cloud ERP scope or to a tool such as Avantra for on-premise and hybrid systems.
Which Solution Manager capabilities does Avantra cover?
Avantra covers technical monitoring and alerting, automated daily checks, ServiceNow incident and event integration, system refresh and start/stop automation, SAP HotNews analysis, and patching for SPAM/SAINT, kernels and HANA.
What Solution Manager capabilities does Avantra not cover?
Avantra does not cover test management, ChaRM-style change management, process documentation or project management. It automates transport imports but has no change approval workflow. Cloud ALM covers several of these, and Avantra works with partners for the rest.
Do I need SAP Focused Run?
Not necessarily. Focused Run suits very large estates with advanced monitoring needs and has its own maintenance timeline, independent of Solution Manager. Avantra works alongside Focused Run where teams already use it.
What happens to SAP Landscape Management (LaMa)?
SAP LaMa 3.0 mainstream maintenance ends on 31 December 2027, the same date as Solution Manager, with no extended phase announced (SAP Note 3375877). Avantra automates SAP system refresh and start/stop for SAP systems, instances, databases and cloud servers, the core tasks teams run in LaMa.