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In the last few years, the IT world of SAP customers has grown much more complex. Instead of one
single SAP R/3 system, there are now extensive system landscapes distributed over the entire globe
involving different solutions. Thus, it has become much more complicated to manage all of the
components of the various solutions.
The management process has also become more complicated for SAP itself. For example, over the
last several years, SAP has consolidated separate information sources and services into the SAP
Service Marketplace (service.sap.com). By having a solution management system at every customer
site, SAP can offer a virtually seamless link from customer systems to the service marketplace,
helping to reduce the time for support, notes access, and so on.
Audio Transcript
Solution Manager provides many benefits for the customer. One of the benefits is more reliable IT
solutions. With SAP Solution Manager, companies can minimize risk during implementation and
operation. They can avoid inconsistencies in heterogeneous environments by performing crosscomponent consistency checks. With the SAP Solution Manager Service Desk, customers can
resolve issues quickly. The result is better IT service and less down time.
The tools and content provided by SAP Solution Manager make implementation and change
management projects more efficient. Companies can reduce the cost of process design, technical
setup, business setup, support and operations, testing, and knowledge transfer. Centralized project
handling, blueprinting, configuration, and testing ensure consistency and avoid redundancies,
which reduces the cost of implementation projects in multi-component environments.
SAP Solution Manager provides a framework for consistent solution documentation and preserves
documents for later use, which reduces the costs of upgrades or continuous improvement projects.
Benefits of SAP Solution Manager
More reliable IT solutions
Minimize risk during implementation
Avoid inconsistencies
Resolve issues quickly resulting in less down time
More efficient implementation and change management projects
Reduced cost of implementation and continuous improvement
Reduce cost of process design technical setup, business setup, support and
operations, testing, and knowledge transfer
Centralized project handling blueprinting, configuration, and testing
Reduces the costs of upgrades or continuous improvement projects.
Benefits of Solution Manager: 2
Audio Transcript
Another benefit of SAP Solution Manager is faster return on investment. SAP Solution Manager
accelerates implementation and continuous improvement. It provides implementation accelerators
and a library of preconfigured business processes as a starting point for projects. This means that
companies don't need to begin from scratch, and can benefit from SAPs business process
experience. Content and services available through SAP Solution Manager such as
implementation road maps, best-practice documents, and SAP solution management services,
speed learning and accelerate projects.
Using Solution Manager can also reduce the cost of operation by providing a central point of
control for multi-component environments. In heterogeneous environments, SAP Solution Manager
facilitates technical and application integration.
Finally, Solution Manager gives the customer more leverage from their IT investments. SAP
Solution Manager and integrates with IT landscapes that include both SAP and non-SAP
applications. Companies can use it to reduce their total cost of ownership without making major
changes to their IT environments.
Implementation Roadmap for SAP Solutions provides the methodological framework for the
project team to leverage in the implementation of a SAP solution. It covers, among other
things, the necessary project management, requirements gathering, design, configuration of
business processes, technical implementation, test procedures, training and organization
change management.
Solution Management Roadmap
The Solution Management Roadmap provides a methodology for the implementation of the
technical infrastructure and its operation. The Solution Management Roadmap complements
the Implementation Roadmap.
Global Template Roadmap
The Global Template Roadmap describes how to organize and run a project in which a
corporate template is developed. The Global Template Roadmap is geared toward more
complex implementation or harmonization projects, typically involving more than one kind
of SAP solution and a variety of sites, possibly in different countries. The corporate template
is rolled out to other sites in a follow-up project.
Upgrade Roadmap
The Upgrade Roadmap is designed to help you carry out the customizing activities required
for an upgrade. These customizing activities are essential if you want to continue to use the
same functions in your business application components after an upgrade.
Other Roadmaps
The Enterprise Portal and Exchange Infrastructure roadmaps are simply variations of the
Implementation Roadmap.
The ASAP Implementation Roadmap provides a work breakdown structure that can be used to plan
and track the underlying activities and tasks of the implementation; however, it is not meant to be
characterized as a project management tool. In fact, there are links to Microsoft Project from the
roadmap, allowing a project manager to download the entire structure into an MS Project plan.
Each phase of the roadmap provides a list of general project management activities, such as project
team status, scope management, training plan management, and so on.
Roadmap structure
Viewing/text area
Attachments area
The roadmap structure gives the project team a list of what to do and when to do it. This appears
on the left-side of the screen displayed. The roadmap structure can be filtered by roles so that each
team member can focus only on those items requiring their attention.
The viewing/text area, on the upper right-side of the screen, displays procedural guides,
prerequisite information, and deliverables of the highlighted structure items on the left-side of the
screen.
The attachments area on the lower right-side of the screen displays various items, such as
accelerators, issues, and supplemental documentation. In this area you can also carry-out various
tasks, such as assigning project team members and tracking the status of the highlighted item in the
roadmap structure.
Blueprint structure
Business scenarios
Business process groups
Associated items
Blueprint document
Each feature has a direct impact on the other. Let's take a closer look at these features and how
they relate.
The Business Blueprint structure is displayed on the left side of the screen. This structure is
developed through the business process workshops; all requirements gathered are recorded and
associated with a structure item. The content used to establish the structure is found in the
Central repository for components of SAP Solution Manager solutions. These components can be:
Structure elements: organizational units, master data, processes and process steps
Assignments to structure elements such as transactions or IMG activities
Business Process Repository (BPR).
The business structure displayed on this screen is based on a business scenario. The business
scenarios are first defined, and then supporting business process groups are chosen from the BPR
based on those scenarios.
These decisions are based upon the activities outlined in the Business Blueprint phase of the
Implementation Roadmap, where workshops are organized with the purpose of defining the
business process needs of the project.
On the right side of the screen, associated items are available to support the line items in the
structure on the left. Additional features such as project documentation, transaction assignments,
and graphical flow of processes are also available.
Once the blueprint structure is finalized, the blueprint document can be generated and becomes
the "master plan" for the realization phase of the project.
Using the blueprint document generated in the Business Blueprint phase, the project team will go
into the Configuration transaction in the SAP Solution Manager to customize the attached
The figure depicts the integration of the testing tools provided by the SAP Solution Manager.
This figure shows the components of the testing workflow, from the building of test plan to the
execution of the test cases within the plan to the analysis of results.
The benefits of the testing features include:
Reduced time for test preparation and execution
Single point of access to complete system landscape
Central storage of testing material and test results
Re-use of existing testing material
Summary
This topic focused on the various tool sets available in SAP Solution Manager. You reviewed the
major project management features such as links to Microsoft Project and a work breakdown
structure. You also learned about features of the Implementation Roadmap, such as the roadmap
structure and the accelerators area. Finally, you reviewed the major features of both the Blueprint
and Configuration transactions.
Describe the concept of Solution Monitoring using the SAP Solution Manager
Explain the capability of the service desk features in SAP Solution Manager
Describe some advanced features of the SAP Solution Manager
Solution Monitoring
Audio Transcript
The increasing number of IT solutions is a growing challenge for the administration team in a
computer center. As a result, computer center managers demand a monitoring method that is
centralized (with all information in one tool), yet can be extended to cover new components.
Instead of classic system monitoring of individual system components, we now talk about solution
monitoring, where entire business processes can be monitored across multiple components. This
concept is realized through the following three monitoring sections within the SAP Solution
Manager: Business Process Monitoring, Central System Monitoring, and Service Level
Management.
The continually increasing number of IT solutions and components is a growing challenge for the
administration team in a computer center. The number of components has increased from what was
required with SAP R/3 (including SAP instances, database, hardware, and operating system) to
include an ever-growing range of technologies. As a result of this development, computer center
managers demand a monitoring method that is centralized (with all information in one tool), yet can
be extended to cover new components.
Instead of classic system monitoring of individual system components, we now talk about Solution
Monitoring, where entire business processes can be monitored as a whole across multiple
components. This concept is realized through the following three monitoring sections within the
SAP Solution Manager:
Business Process Monitoring
1. Real-time monitoring with a focus on the graphical display of business processes based on
the Computing Center Management System (CCMS)
System Monitoring: Central System
2. Administration and real-time monitoring based on the Computing Center Management
System (CCMS)
Service Level Management
Monitoring Recommendations
Use Service Level Management in the SAP Solution Manager to lay the foundation for setting up
the correct procedures for monitoring of your SAP solution. The recommended technique is to
define an explicit monitoring concept for central system monitoring using the Computing Center
Management System (CCMS) in conjunction with the SAP Solution Manager. This form of system
monitoring, that starts with monitoring all business-process-relevant system components, is known
as the inside-out approach. The complementary outside-in approach involves using tools from thirdparty manufacturers. To achieve comprehensive monitoring, SAP recommends using both
approaches simultaneously.
Now that we have talked about some of the features of solution monitoring, we will look at another
component of the SAP Solution Manager: Service Desk. The service desk offers a complete
infrastructure for organizing and operating a solution-wide support organization at your site.
Features include:
Message handling process
End users can create messages that automatically collect system and context data. An
interface for third-party messaging tools is also included.
Customer solution database
Allows customer to build a history database for future troubleshooting
Managing SAP Notes
Integrated notes search from the SAP Service Marketplace, as well as the ability to
implement the notes via the SAP Note Assistant
Solution Manager diagnostics
Provides all functionality to centrally analyze and monitor a complete SAP solution
Module Summary
This product provided an overview of SAP Solution Manager. You reviewed the uses of SAP
Solution Manager, such as allowing customers to integrate their SAP Solutions and manage other
components, including the SAP Service Desk. You also learned that the ASAP methodology is fully
integrated into SAP Solution Manager, and Accelerated SAP roadmaps provide content, tools, and
expertise from thousands of successful implementations.
You learned about the major features of both the Blueprint and Configuration transactions and how
you can use these features to develop your own customized structure. Finally, you reviewed the
features included in solution monitoring and the service desk and how these features help manage,
support, and optimize the productive environment.