Digital transformation has revolutionized business operations, compelling companies to adapt swiftly to new technologies like cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence.
In this evolving landscape, SAP Cloud ALM emerges as a pivotal tool for optimizing cloud applications and business processes. This blog post compares SAP Cloud ALM and SAP Solution Manager, another SAP application lifecycle management (ALM) solution, highlighting why SAP Cloud ALM stands out as a more beneficial choice for modern enterprises.
Understanding SAP Cloud ALM
SAP Cloud ALM is a cloud-based application designed to maximize the performance of cloud applications and enhance business processes. It offers a comprehensive suite of functions for monitoring application performance, diagnosing and resolving issues, and minimizing risks. Furthermore, it fosters collaboration across various departments within a company, ensuring streamlined operations.
To leverage SAP Cloud ALM effectively, businesses need a robust implementation strategy. The SAP Activate methodology, known for its agile approach, provides a clear framework for planning, implementing, and monitoring projects. By understanding SAP Cloud ALM and SAP Activate, companies can optimize their implementation strategies, harness the power of cloud computing, and boost their competitiveness.
SAP Solution Manager: A Legacy Approach
For over a decade, SAP Solution Manager has been the go-to tool for managing the entire ALM cycle. It has been particularly useful in operations (monitoring technical components), change management, and project planning for migrations. However, its monolithic design is tailored to on-premise system landscapes, which are becoming increasingly obsolete in the era of SaaS (software-as-a-service) models. As businesses transition to cloud applications, the limitations of SAP Solution Manager become evident. It lacks the agility required to manage modern cloud environments effectively.
Why SAP Cloud ALM is the Better Choice
As companies navigate the complexities of digital transformation, the choice of ALM tools becomes critical. While SAP Solution Manager has served businesses well in the past, SAP Cloud ALM offers distinct advantages that align better with modern cloud-centric strategies. Here’s why SAP Cloud ALM is the better choice for forward-thinking enterprises:
Cloud-Native Architecture
SAP Cloud ALM is built from the ground up as a cloud-native solution, ensuring better scalability, flexibility, and agility compared to the on-premise–centric design of SAP Solution Manager. This cloud-native approach enables seamless integration and management of modern cloud applications, which is crucial for businesses looking to stay competitive in a fast-paced digital world.
Enhanced Operational Efficiency
One of the standout benefits of SAP Cloud ALM is its operational efficiency. Unlike SAP Solution Manager, which requires significant effort for regular maintenance and updates, SAP Cloud ALM is managed entirely by SAP. This eliminates the need for businesses to dedicate resources to maintaining and updating the solution, allowing them to focus on core business activities.
Superior Integration Capabilities
SAP Cloud ALM offers seamless integration with other SAP cloud solutions like SAP Integration Suite, SAP SuccessFactors, and SAP Ariba. This level of integration is less complex and more robust compared to the integration capabilities of SAP Solution Manager, which primarily supports older SAP technologies.
Focus on SaaS Applications
Designed specifically for the unique challenges of managing SaaS applications, SAP Cloud ALM provides specialized tools and processes that SAP Solution Manager lacks. This makes SAP Cloud ALM particularly effective for companies that have adopted or plan to adopt a cloud-first strategy.
Cost-Effectiveness
The cost of operating SAP Solution Manager is relatively high, considering the resources required for its maintenance and operation. In contrast, SAP Cloud ALM offers a more cost-effective solution by reducing direct operational costs and providing automatic updates. Additionally, SAP Cloud ALM is available for free to SAP cloud product users, with optional paid tiers for additional storage and features.
SAP Cloud ALM Case Study
Many SAP partners both lead the front in tool adoption and go a step further by creating enhancements on top of it using our published APIs. They also help to shape the product by providing early feedback. We are thankful to RBEI for sharing the following story from their customer projects.
RBEI is a 100 percent owned subsidiary of Robert Bosch GmbH. It is one of the world’s leading global suppliers of technology and services, offering end-to-end engineering, IT, and business solutions. Syed Yousuff, Practice Head, Cloud and IT Infrastructure Platform at RBEI, provided insight on how RBEI took advantage of the SAP Cloud ALM.
One of RBEI’s major customers wanted to implement performance management, which is a part of the hire-to-retire process. They had an aggressive timeline to implement SAP SuccessFactors and to manage the complete lifecycle management. They wanted well-documented business processes to ensure a smooth transition from the implementation team to the support team.
As part of the SAP Early Adopter Care program, RBEI was amongst the first partners to adopt SAP Cloud ALM. Right from the initial interaction and exploration phase, they were confident in the benefits SAP Cloud ALM that would bring to implementation and operation activities and used it successfully to accelerate the implementation projects for their clients. When they proposed this solution to the customer and explained that it covers the entire product lifecycle, they did not face resistance, as the customer also wanted to reduce the tool clutter.
They started with installing SAP Cloud ALM, which was done in 15 minutes with a click of button. All the initial requirements were mapped into the system. They collected more than 200 requirements and created and managed more than 400 tasks. Later operational activities like end-to-end process monitoring and integration and exception monitoring were also done successfully using SAP Cloud ALM.
RBEI had a positive experience with this implementation and shared some of the benefits in the following list:
Simplicity and Transparency
RBEI found the UI and reports simple to consume. SAP Cloud ALM helped in highlighting the granularities like using different workstreams or tasks or at which stage they were currently in. They could consume intelligent enterprise scenarios and SAP Best Practices content, visualize processes, and manage the scope in fit-to-standard workshops. Before SAP Cloud ALM, they would give different status reports, reports every two weeks, and presentations to the customers during implementation projects, which was a tedious process for both them and their customers. Real-time status and transparency of the current state of project to all the stake holders in SAP Cloud ALM tool helped them save time and effort.
Faster Implementation and Reduced Effort
With the help of SAP Cloud ALM, they were able to reduce efforts up to 20% right in the initial preparation phase. They could also successfully shrink the timeline by avoiding redundant Excel sheets and templates.
Centralized Digital Repositories
They used the centralized digital repositories for processes, requirements, and tasks and used the standard processes available as best practices, avoiding the complications of recreating and running the processes for the customers. They mapped them successfully to the customer’s requirements and created and managed tasks.
The success of a project also depends on efficient collaboration and planning. RBEI has extended SAP Cloud ALM via SAP APIs. They enabled the seamless integration of SAP Cloud ALM with Microsoft Teams, which simplifies usage and results in higher adoption.
While working on a project, the number of emails triggered by all the project’s actions can be overwhelming. To save time and effort, they had the idea to integrate SAP Cloud ALM with a collaboration tool like Microsoft Teams.
They were informed about the release of APIs from the SAP Cloud ALM team, and they immediately started working to put the idea into action. The project team members and developers who did not have an SAP background were fascinated with the documentation, with clear instructions for every API usage, provided by the SAP Cloud ALM team. They were able to leverage APIs successfully using the GitHub samples and blog posts from the SAP Cloud ALM team.
Syed said, “We really fell in love with how adaptable the API is, and how amazing the documents are maintained and structured.” The project included the following components:
- Dashboard: The first scenario in which they worked was to visualize the tasks created in SAP Cloud ALM and the project’s overview in Microsoft Teams, as well as on-time tracking and status reporting.
- Kanban board: After successfully visualizing the entire project overview, they decided to utilize the interactive kanban board to plan their tasks in Microsoft Teams. They were able to replicate the task list from SAP Cloud ALM in the Microsoft Teams planner. Since Microsoft Teams was used in other projects, this was accepted by the teams, as they could work in any environment, automatically replicated. Also, the drag-and-drop capability of tasks in the kanban view was a very simple way of changing statuses.
- Create tasks: With enhanced collaboration combined with efficient task management, the project team could deliver with agility. They were able to create SAP Cloud ALM tasks directly from Microsoft Teams via message cards.
- Approval workflow: They were also able to initiate the workflow for approval based on predefined configurations in Microsoft Teams.
- Chatbot: They also made an interactive chatbot to communicate with SAP Cloud ALM.
RBEI was an early adopter of the tool and collaborated closely with the SAP Cloud ALM team. They truly experienced co-innovation, which was instrumental in further development. The business challenges were addressed and new solutions were invented together. This helped in delivering an immersive experience that drove the development of a co-innovation roadmap for future customers’ business implementation goals. They explicitly requested features like the Gantt chart and multiple teams in the same project; these innovations were delivered by the SAP Cloud ALM team within a short time span.
As companies continue to embrace digital transformation and cloud-based solutions, the need for a modern, agile, and efficient ALM tool becomes paramount. SAP Cloud ALM, with its cloud-native architecture, enhanced operational efficiency, superior integration capabilities, and focus on SaaS applications, clearly outshines the legacy SAP Solution Manager. For businesses looking to optimize their cloud applications and stay ahead in the competitive landscape, SAP Cloud ALM is the ideal choice. By adopting SAP Cloud ALM, companies can ensure they are well-equipped to meet the demands of today's dynamic business environment and secure a sustainable competitive advantage.
About the SAP Cloud ALM Book
In today's rapidly evolving IT landscape, managing applications effectively in the cloud is crucial. Our book SAP Cloud ALM: Application Lifecycle Management is designed to help you harness the full potential of SAP Cloud ALM for efficient cloud-based application lifecycle management. Whether you're an IT project manager, administrator, test manager, IT landscape architect, or consultant, this guide offers the insights and practical advice you need for successful cloud application management.
The introduction delves into the fundamentals of SAP Cloud ALM, providing a comprehensive overview of its features and capabilities. You will learn about the key components of SAP Cloud ALM and how they fit into the broader SAP ecosystem, setting the stage for a deeper understanding of cloud-based ALM processes.
The book is structured around the SAP Activate methodology, starting with the prepare phase. You will explore how to create a new SAP cloud tenant, set up the project environment, connect systems to the transport system, and adopt agile methodologies for project implementation. Each chapter in this section is designed to guide you through the critical tasks of the prepare phase, ensuring a solid foundation for your project.
As you move into the explore phase, the focus shifts to understanding and documenting your company's requirements. You'll learn how to use SAP processes to structure and document these requirements, conduct fit-to-standard and fit-gap workshops, and plan and execute tests to ensure your project meets its goals.
In the realize phase, the book covers how to implement the documented requirements. This includes creating user stories, developing test cases, and performing tests within SAP Cloud ALM. The deploy phase then takes you through planning and preparing for system changes, implementing and testing these changes, and releasing them for production.
Operational topics are covered in the run phase, with chapters dedicated to business service management, incident management, and implementing a suitable monitoring system in SAP Cloud ALM. Finally, the book explores the extension options available with SAP Cloud ALM, providing a look at the basics of implementing extensions and practical examples of their application.
This book aims to equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to effectively manage your cloud applications using SAP Cloud ALM. By following detailed guidance and best practices, you will be prepared to navigate the complexities of cloud-based application lifecycle management.
About the Authors
Matthias Friedrich has been with NTT DATA Business Solutions GBMS GmbH since 2008, leading the global innovation and optimization service area. He supports customers in expanding, optimizing, and developing applications and integrating them into business processes. Matthias began his career in 1998 at SAP Systems Integration AG in Dresden, focusing on IT service and change management concepts, project coordination, and product idea implementation.
Fred Kindler, a business informatics graduate, started his career at NTT DATA Business Solutions GBMS GmbH in 2011. He consults in ALM and manages an ALM team, focusing on application transition in the application solution advisory division. His expertise lies in advising on ALM processes for implementing hybrid landscapes in the cloud.
Marcel Kirsten has been with NTT DATA Business Solutions GBMS GmbH since 2016. With a master's degree from Chemnitz University of Technology, he specializes in application lifecycle management and application operations. Marcel supports SAP Solution Manager 7.2 projects and develops monitoring services for SAP Focused Run, advising on SAP Cloud ALM implementation.
Daniel Kloppich is an ALM expert at NTT DATA Business Solutions GBMS GmbH, focusing on IT service management in hybrid landscapes. He started his career in 2009 as a consultant at Comarch AG and holds a degree in media informatics from the Technical University of Dresden. Daniel specializes in process consulting for IT transition and operations on a global level.
Mathias List has been an ALM expert at NTT DATA Business Solutions GBMS GmbH since 2022. He started his career in 2008 as an SAP consultant for SAP Solution Manager at BIT Group GmbH. Mathias is experienced in IT service management, change and release management, and uses methodologies like ITIL and Scrum in his projects. He has authored two SAP PRESS books and specializes in ALM solutions, including SAP Cloud ALM.
Bert Lorenz is a development consultant at NTT DATA Business Solutions GBMS GmbH, supporting over 100 customers in SAP Business Technology Platform, automation, low code, integration, and ALM. He is responsible for global development operations within SAP and application services, integrating these methodologies into business processes.
Lars Teuber has been with NTT DATA Business Solutions GBMS GmbH since 2008. With degrees in economics and engineering in data and information technology, Lars has managed projects in ALM since 2005. He supports the transformation of ALM processes to SAP Cloud ALM, specializing in optimizing ALM processes using tools like SAP Solution Manager and SAP Focused Run.
Who Is This Book For?
This book is intended for IT professionals managing SAP systems and looking to optimize their application lifecycle management in the cloud. It is particularly useful for administrators, IT project managers, test managers, IT landscape architects, and consultants. Whether you are new to SAP Cloud ALM or seeking to deepen your knowledge, this book offers valuable insights and practical guidance to enhance your IT operations.
How to Purchase
If you’re interested in purchasing SAP Cloud ALM, follow this link and choose the format that works best for you: e-book, print edition, or bundle (both e-book and print).
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