Solution manager - WHY an own system ?

Question

hi,
we are uprgrading from sap R/3 4.6c to mySAP ERP2005 the next weeks.
SAP told us that from April 2nd it is a MUST to have a solution manager for runnint mySAP ERP2005. is this true ?
why we have to use the sol. manager ? what is it good for ?? is it really a own system or can we install it together with mysap erp on the same system ?
We are a little bit 'pissed off' about this situation, because no one told us before.
regards, Martin

Answer 1

> >Believe it or not - but now the sales department
> would send a consultant to "help" us >setting the
> system up - that's the story.
>
> That's its happening around SAP, not jus' products.
Yes, I know - but we won't pay him.
>
> >No comment on this, this is an open platform and
> sharing those kind of information is >crucial. If you
> (= SAP) don't want that, then please moderate the
> forums, delete all posts, >that are not just hyping
> your products. People want to know reality.
>
> Hyping??!@ you will not learn at all...
Yeah - If you tell people just to ask "technical" question and not to pinpoint the necessity and valuability of a product, that is "hyping" - just as M$ is doing with Vista and the "revolutionary Office 2007".
>
> >So constructive criticisim is not wanted? SDN is
> just for saying how "nice" and "good" >products are?
> I'm not shouting because of shouting but I'm arguing.
> As of now I did not >get ANY point of you to confute
> my arguments - you are just pointing to high-gloss
> >marketing powerpoint presentation - and we all know,
> from long experiences, what they >tell.
> Using words like S*t,h*l, this is what you call
> constructive criticism?? If you don't understand the
> products atleast try to understand people. Its not
> about saying "nice" and "good", its about saying
> "whether it is nice?" or "whether it is nice?". Pros
> and Cons are beautifully discussed in this forum
> previously, i would place an humble suggestion to go
> thru' them first.
Where did I wrote "sh***"?
> If you really have done it with latest patches and
> release levels you may hardly need to rever 5 - 10
> notes. For your kind information, this SOLMAN with
> all features can be implemented in 7 Mandays with all
> the features.
7 Mandays? will you pay me for this? Will YOU pay users disruptions when installing agents/plugins/patches on the connected systems? Will YOU pay the time you need to keep those patches/agents/plugins in the external systems up-to-date? We had BIG problems with ST-PI* and ST-A/PI* during our Unicode conversion so don't tell me, there is no disruption.
>
> You know the usage of SOLMAN, sorry you don't know,
> that's why you are arguing. It is to add
> professionalism to your work.
> If you had implemented SAP how did you maintain your
> documents? I bet you would have had as junk folders.
> That's no more with SOLMAN.
We started with release 2.2d in 1995 and upgraded since over the 3.0 releases to now 4.7 - and we did that without SolMan because it did simply not exists - and it worked - sucessfully, otherwise I wouldn't post here. Believe it or not, we used ASAP (the product before SolMan) - and we have those processes documented in there (still).
> Have you ever documented your Business Process? I bet
> you would not have, even if you had you will have in
> junk folders as files.
YES - we have - and we also teach other companies to do on that. And there are MORE systems involved than just SAP systems; environments are NEVER homogeneous (as you and evreyone @ SAP might assume).
> Have you ever monitored your business process, to see
> if your people are working Smart. I bet you would not
> have monitored, because you didn't have SOLMAN. Its
> not just Clearing Invoices, making FI Entries,
> procuring materials. It is doing all these
> efficiently.
Yes, that's what you got told, BPs in a manufacturing company are MUCH more than that - and they ARE documented - indeed - but not in SolMan, there are other products for that purpose too and I doubt that we will pay a lot of $$$ again to put them into SolMan. We have documented about 250 of them - do you know any customer who have that much in their Solution Manager? If yes, then I would love to talk to that customer. It's not because SolMan may not be good for that - it's because SolMan is too SAP centric (or can you tell me how to "monitor" an interface to a non-SAP host system)?
>
> Have you ever seen what is going wrong technically in
> your Existing ERP system, I bet you would not have
> because you don't have System Monitoring in place.
So:
- if we have a working monitoring infrastructure (NOT based on SolMan and NOT reduced to SAP systems (there's network, backup, filesystems, VPN, encryption etc. etc. etc.)
- if we have a working workflow for change management (not based on SolMan and not only reduced to SAP products, there is more than that)
- if we have a ticket system (for SAP and all the other areas around including PC helpdesk, printers, blackberry and other stuff)
- if we are maintaining and tuning our systems from day 1 (01/01/1995 starting with 2.2d) ourselves, EWAs often led to unstartable inperformant systems or make them not come up, "burned kid avoids fire", thus the reason, why we don't use them at all.
then WHAT is the additional value of investing 7 mandays in a separate product?
I'm not saying, that it's a bad product, I'm blaming the product management for FORCING it to customers, denying the competence of a customer without a SolMan to find the right patches, assuming that people are unable to drive their business without it. They did the last 10 years and we MAY need something additional if SOA/ESA/Web2.0/whatever-name comes into production one day, but that is far ahead (if you ask me) and a different topic.
Keep in mind that not everyone uses just ERP 200x, EPy and M$ operating systems.
Markus