SAP has defined a clear strategic direction for the lifecycle management of SAP applications, transitioning to Cloud ALM as it moves away from Solution Manager, which is approaching the end of its mainstream support in 2027. This transition reflects SAP’s broader shift toward cloud-native lifecycle management models, which are better aligned with cloud-based and hybrid SAP landscapes.
Cloud ALM is often expected to function as a direct replacement, yet many organizations encounter challenges that only become visible after adoption.
Common areas of friction include:
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Limited coverage for hybrid and on-premises systems
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Maturity gaps in performance and stability of the cloud platform, test automation, change and release management, and orchestration
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Lack of clarity around the monitoring scope and business process visibility
Addressing these gaps early ensures continuity in SAP lifecycle management during and after the transition. In this post, we’ll explore these challenges and provide practical guidance on maintaining end-to-end visibility and operational efficiency throughout the lifecycle.
The challenges in managing SAP across multi-platform environments
Modern SAP implementations rarely exist in isolation. Most organizations operate SAP systems alongside a variety of workloads spanning public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises infrastructure. This creates a complex network of dependencies where SAP applications must seamlessly interact with cloud-native microservices, legacy on-premises databases, third-party SaaS applications, and containerized workloads.
These interdependencies add layers of complexity to every phase of the SAP lifecycle. Database clusters may stretch across multiple availability zones, integration platforms can reside in different cloud regions, and API gateways are often managed by separate teams. Even a seemingly routine SAP system refresh now requires careful coordination across multiple infrastructure domains, each with its own provisioning processes, security requirements, and operational procedures.
What are the limitations of SAP Cloud ALM?
While SAP Cloud ALM provides a modern, cloud-native interface designed to streamline SAP lifecycle management, its capabilities are primarily optimized for cloud-based SAP environments. Organizations operating hybrid and on-premises landscapes may encounter several limitations that affect visibility, integration, and process consistency across their SAP ecosystem.
1. Limited integration with legacy and non-SAP systems
Cloud ALM provides pre-configured connectors and APIs for SAP cloud solutions, including SAP S/4HANA Cloud. However, integration with legacy SAP systems such as SAP ECC and NetWeaver Java, and non-SAP applications, often requires additional middleware or custom configurations.
Unlike Solution Manager, which offers more mature integration options for hybrid landscapes, Cloud ALM relies on APIs and OpenTelemetry for external system monitoring and event collection. This can lead to gaps in end-to-end visibility, particularly in multi-platform landscapes where SAP applications interact with cloud microservices, on-premises databases, and third-party SaaS workloads. It also means additional setup time and reliance on technical expertise to maintain consistent end-to-end SAP lifecycle management across heterogeneous environments.
2. Platform performance and stability constraints
As a cloud-native, centrally hosted service, Cloud ALM introduces dependencies on the availability and performance of the underlying SAP cloud platform. Planned maintenance windows and unplanned service interruptions can result in periods of reduced availability, which directly affects organizations that rely on Cloud ALM for monitoring business-critical SAP systems.
Another important consideration is diagnostic depth during infrastructure-level issues. Cloud ALM primarily collects data at the application level, relying on the SAP system to report on underlying components such as the operating system (OS) and database (DB). When issues occur at the OS or DB-level, full-stack diagnostics may be limited and delay root cause analysis at the time it is most needed.
Cost predictability can also be challenging for large or complex environments. Cloud ALM’s consumption-based pricing model (per 8GB of usage in HANA instance size) can introduce unpredictable cost growth for organizations running many systems, large workloads, or long-term historical data retention. This makes budgeting more difficult compared to fixed or capacity-based lifecycle management models.
3. Limited test automation capabilities
While Cloud ALM supports basic test management, its test automation functionality is not yet as mature as Solution Manager or specialized testing tools. Organizations running complex SAP landscapes, especially hybrid environments with on-premises systems, may find it challenging to automate end-to-end regression testing, business process validation, or integration tests across multiple platforms. This limitation can lead to increased manual testing, longer release cycles, and a higher risk of errors during updates or system changes.
4. Change and release management functional gaps
Although Cloud ALM offers basic change and release management functionality, it does not replicate the full capabilities of Solution Manager’s ChaRM. Enterprises that depend on advanced approvals, audit trails, or complex release workflows may experience functional gaps during updates or transitions.
5. Limited orchestration and end-to-end business process visibility
SAP Cloud ALM supports basic recovery and process automation through integrations with external ITSM tools, webhooks, and SAP Workflow Management. However, end-to-end orchestration is largely limited to SAP cloud resources, with minimal native support for on-premises systems or non-SAP cloud components. Organizations requiring consistent workflow automation across hybrid landscapes must rely on third-party orchestration platforms, such as IT-Conductor, to manage complex IT and business processes effectively. This limitation can restrict visibility into automated workflows and reduce the efficiency of cross-platform lifecycle management.
Managing SAP lifecycle in cloud and hybrid environments
Successfully managing the SAP lifecycle across cloud and hybrid environments requires more than Cloud ALM alone. Without complementary tools and strategies, critical processes can remain under-monitored, workflows only partially automated, and visibility limited across legacy and non-SAP systems.
How do you address the limitations of SAP Cloud ALM?
Addressing the limitations of SAP Cloud ALM is necessary for organizations operating hybrid and multi-platform SAP landscapes. The following strategies highlight practical approaches to maintain end-to-end visibility and operational efficiency throughout the lifecycle.
1. Adopt a third-party platform to integrate with legacy and non-SAP systems
To ensure seamless SAP lifecycle management across hybrid landscapes, organizations often need to adopt third-party platforms that complement Cloud ALM. While Cloud ALM provides strong support for cloud-native systems, integrating legacy SAP systems like ECC or NetWeaver Java, as well as non-SAP applications, typically requires additional tools.
Third-party platforms such as IT-Conductor provide pre-built retrievers, connectors, and orchestration capabilities that unify SAP and non-SAP systems. By leveraging these platforms, organizations can automate data collection, coordinate workflows across heterogeneous systems, and gain end-to-end visibility, reducing operational blind spots and enabling more proactive lifecycle management in complex, multi-platform SAP environments.
2. Implement end-to-end observability for your entire tech stack
To address limitations related to platform performance and stability constraints, organizations should ensure their SAP lifecycle management approach includes independent full-stack observability that remains available even when application-level tools are impaired.
When monitoring and diagnostics are collected directly from infrastructure layers (OS/DB), teams can continue to perform root cause analysis during OS- or database-level incidents without relying solely on application-mediated visibility. This ensures that infrastructure failures do not obscure the very data needed to resolve them.
Equally important is operational continuity during platform service interruptions. By maintaining monitoring, alerting, and automation capabilities that are not dependent on a single cloud service, organizations can sustain critical operational workflows, respond to incidents promptly, and reduce mean time to resolution.
Finally, incorporating solutions with flexible data retention and predictable cost models helps organizations balance long-term visibility requirements with financial control, particularly in large environments with high data volumes.
3. Enhance test management with automated testing frameworks
Complex hybrid SAP environments benefit from automated testing frameworks that extend Cloud ALM’s basic test management capabilities. Integrating specialized test automation tools or adopting platforms that orchestrate end-to-end regression, business process, and integration tests enables organizations to systematically validate changes across both cloud and on-premises systems.
By implementing these automated workflows, teams can reduce manual testing effort, accelerate release cycles, and mitigate the risk of errors during updates or system changes. Moreover, automated testing provides consistent validation across diverse systems and environments, ensures critical business processes continue uninterrupted, and generates actionable insights for continuous improvement. Leveraging such frameworks also supports compliance and audit requirements, as detailed test logs and results can be maintained across hybrid landscapes, providing visibility into testing outcomes for stakeholders and regulators alike.
4. Streamline change and release management with IT-Conductor ChAI
While SAP Cloud ALM provides basic change and release management functionality, enterprises with complex hybrid landscapes often require more advanced functionality, including sophisticated approvals, detailed audit trails, and multi-step workflow orchestration. Without these capabilities, organizations may face manual bottlenecks, compliance risks, and slower deployment cycles.
IT-Conductor ChAI™ helps fill this gap by streamlining end-to-end execution of change requests. With ChAI, organizations can implement automated approval workflows, risk-based change validation, and end-to-end orchestration, ensuring that changes are executed consistently and accurately. By reducing reliance on manual coordination, ChAI helps teams accelerate deployment cycles, maintain regulatory compliance, and minimize the risk of errors, even in complex multi-platform SAP landscapes. Additionally, real-time visibility and reporting features provide stakeholders with clear insights into the status and impact of changes, supporting proactive decision-making and operational continuity.
Unlike traditional ChaRM implementations that depend on Solution Manager or Cloud ALM availability, ChAI orchestrates changes across SAP and non-SAP systems independently. This ensures that lifecycle processes remain operational even during SAP or platform-level outages. Organizations can define standardized, risk-based change workflows that span the full technology stack, including SAP systems, databases, operating systems, cloud infrastructure, and third-party services. Execution sequencing, validation steps, rollback logic, and approvals are enforced consistently across environments.
ChAI also provides comprehensive auditability and real-time visibility into change execution. Stakeholders can track the status, impact, and outcomes of changes across all affected systems from a single interface, enabling faster, more informed decision-making. By decoupling change execution from individual platforms, ChAI supports greater operational resilience, faster release cycles, and more reliable SAP lifecycle management in hybrid environments.
5. Improve business process visibility with business process monitoring
To address Cloud ALM’s limitations in end-to-end business process visibility, organizations can leverage IT-Conductor’s business process monitoring solution. This solution provides real-time monitoring of critical SAP business processes, including transactions, batch jobs, process chains, IDocs, and BDocs, across both cloud and on-premises systems.
By detecting potential disruptions early, IT-Conductor not only alerts the appropriate stakeholders but also enables automated recovery actions to prevent process interruptions. Organizations gain continuous visibility into the health and performance of key business processes, allowing them to proactively resolve issues before they impact operations.
IT-Conductor also provides analytics, reporting, and dashboard capabilities that give teams actionable insights into process efficiency, bottlenecks, and trends over time. By integrating Business Process Monitoring with Cloud ALM, organizations can achieve full lifecycle visibility, faster incident response, and more efficient management of complex SAP environments.
