In this paper Gavin Richardson and Neil Start highlight the capabilities of Solution Manager.

Often, SAP Solution Manager is perceived as a toolset for the ‘Techies’, something that is not easily accessible or simple to use. The truth is that Solution Manager is a comprehensive Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) toolset, providing functionality to reduce the Total Cost of Operation of the SAP solution. The best news of all is that this functionality is available free of charge to the vast majority of SAP customers, since it’s included as part of the SAP enterprise support agreement.

So, if all this functionality of Solution Manager is free of charge to SAP Enterprise Support customers, why is so little known about it and why is there seemingly such little uptake? Gavin Richardson and Neil Start propose that the biggest barrier to greater adoption of the tool is a fundamental lack of knowledge of what Solution Manager has to offer, how it can be exploited, and the real business benefits it will bring.

In this white paper, the authors cover some of the capabilities of Solution Manager in an attempt to lay many of the common misconceptions of the product to rest and show that it is much more than just a System Administration tool.