On July 30th, 2025, we hosted our webinar: "SAP Upgrades and Migrations in the Dark? Let IT-Conductor Light the Way with SUMMon." Led by Linh Nguyen, the session addressed one of the most pressing challenges in the SAP ecosystem, namely, navigating complex upgrades and migrations without visibility or control.
Whether you’re upgrading to S/4HANA, transitioning to SAP Cloud ERP (formerly RISE with SAP), or managing a broad patching cycle, this webinar introduced how SUMMon, IT-Conductor’s latest tool, helps clarify and streamline what is often a complex and hard-to-track process.
The Problem: SAP SUM Lacks Visibility
SAP’s Software Update Manager (SUM) is a powerful but opaque tool. While essential for upgrades, conversions, and migrations, SUM was never designed for real-time transparency or collaboration. Linh opened by highlighting the pain points of SAP upgrades:
-
Projects can span multiple weeks with thousands of SUM phases and countless logs buried in the file system.
-
SUM’s native observer view is inadequate, as it only displays the current phase without providing insight into logs, errors, or historical data.
-
Project managers and cross-functional teams lack real-time visibility, forcing technical leads to act as both engineers and PMs.
-
SUM mail notifications can fail silently, leading to hours of lost time.
The Hidden Cost of Running SUM “As-Is”
At first glance, relying solely on SAP’s native SUM tooling might seem sufficient, but beneath the surface, it creates significant and often underestimated costs. When errors occur (especially those that go unnoticed for hours due to unreliable notifications), projects stall. This downtime often ripples outward, throwing off coordination across functional teams, project managers, and stakeholders who are left in the dark about progress and expectations.
Meanwhile, the burden of managing the entire process typically falls on one or two technical leads. With no automation or collaborative tools in place, these team members are expected to perform 24/7 heroics to keep upgrades moving. Much of the post-upgrade documentation is also manual and error-prone, relying on screenshots and memory to piece together what happened.
And these costs compound over time. It’s time for a smarter approach.
The Solution: IT-Conductor SUMMon
SUMMon is IT-Conductor’s new monitoring and collaboration layer built around SAP’s Software Update Manager. Rather than replacing SUM, it enhances and extends it by enabling:
-
Upgrade monitoring via dashboards
-
Automated log collection and visibility into each SUM phase
-
Intelligent alerting and ticket-based incident tracking
-
Embedded comments and screenshot documentation for audit trails
-
Integration with project management and ITSM tools
Figure 1: IT-Conductor SUMMon view
In summary, IT-Conductor SUMMon is a platform that transforms upgrades from a solo act into a collaborative, transparent team effort.
Live Demo Highlights
During the webinar, Linh showcased a demo of how SUMMon interacts with live upgrade runs, capturing everything from SUM’s internal phase progress to real-time logs and job statistics.
The live demo included the following SUMMon features:
-
Migration Project Dashboard: See upgrades across systems, phases, and statuses.
-
SAP Landscape Discovery: Assess system health and readiness pre-upgrade.
-
Deep Dive into SUM Phases: Monitor logs, progress percentage, and job activity without touching SUM.
-
Upgrade Log Analysis: View errors, processing times, reruns, and total duration.
-
Upgrade Runbooks and Reporting: Generate post-upgrade reports from actual execution data.
-
Collaborative Ticketing: Automatically open and track incidents when SUM hits errors or requires dialogue input.
One standout capability: SUMMon can show how long each phase ran, how many reruns occurred, and what actions were taken. This is essential data for runbook optimization and compliance.
Want to take your SAP operations even further?
Join our next webinar and learn how automation can help SAP teams with the following:
- Common pitfalls in SAP operations that drain time and resources
- Why automation is key in cloud, on-prem, and hybrid setups
- How CIOs and IT leaders are solving complexity with lifecycle automation
Centralized Download Management with SAP Team Download Manager
As a companion to SUMMon, IT-Conductor’s SAP Team Download Manager simplifies the early stages of upgrade projects by centralizing software downloads.
-
Central repository for SAP updates, patches, and tools.
-
Download once, distribute efficiently to target systems, which saves bandwidth and time.
-
Eliminates file corruption risks during repeated uploads and transfers.
-
Version control and cleanup tools help prevent outdated files from lingering and cluttering storage.
-
Improved security, ensuring downloads are verified and traceable.
This tool is particularly useful for organizations juggling multiple upgrades or working in distributed teams, as it streamlines the setup phase of every SUM project.
Join the IT-Conductor MSP Onboarding Program
Are you a Managed Services Provider (MSP) supporting multiple SAP customers and upgrades? IT-Conductor’s MSP onboarding program gives you everything you need to scale, upgrade, and perform migration operations with confidence.
Key Benefits:
-
Performance Optimization: Leverage our assessments to pinpoint and address performance bottlenecks
-
Capacity Planning: Utilize our analysis to anticipate future resource needs, preventing capacity-related issues before they arise.
-
Accelerated Cloud Transformation: Achieve accelerated results in the cloud, leading to faster evaluations and competitive advantage.
-
Revenue Growth Opportunities: Expand your market reach and add value to your cloud and service sales with our comprehensive assessments.
-
Access to Expertise: Benefit from continuous insights and guidance from our seasoned experts, enhancing your capabilities and service quality.
-
Service Expansion: Expand your portfolio with our leading cloud migration assessments
Want to learn more or try SUMMon in your environment? Let us know, and we’ll walk you through your first onboarding session. This is your opportunity to elevate SAP upgrade delivery.
Ready to scale your SAP services with confidence?
Watch the Recording
