Top Three Third-Party SAP Change and Release Automation Tools in 2023
About a decade before SAP Solution Manager ChaRM was a twinkle in SAP’s eye, change and release automation solutions were already available. Most of these solutions started life as an SAP basis tool where their value was in automating change and transport migration and management.
As SAP environments increased in complexity, the tools increased in complexity too.
First, they had to evolve when functionality was split out into separate mySAP landscapes. The tools had to help teams manage and control separate but interrelated changes across several SAP applications.
Then they had to consider the complexity of managing change across 5 system (N+1) landscapes. Things like synchronisation and retrofit became important. Managing the merge of changes created by separate teams was a challenge.
More recently, many SAP teams have taken on agile and DevOps methodologies. The tools helped teams manage sprints, releases, and CI/CD schedules. Often in parallel with traditional waterfall methods.
Finally, to ensure cross-application visibility and communication, integration with incident and project management solutions like Jira, and ServiceNow ITSM became required functionality.
Today, to meet the needs of SAP teams, SAP change and release management solutions must be much more than transport management tools.
The Top Three
Several other solutions could fit into the third-party SAP change and release automation category, but here are the top three.
The selection has been based on several criteria: longevity, market acceptance, and functionality.
The three listed pioneered SAP change and release automation over 20 years ago and are still strong today.
Each solution vendor has big-name SAP users within their customer lists, and to a greater or lesser degree, each solution can be configured to meet the evolved change and request requirements of SAP teams.
Rev-Trac (Revelation Software Concepts)
SAP Change Management - SAP Transport Management | Rev-Trac
Revelation Software Concepts (RSC), an Australian-based Independent Software Vendor, pioneered the change request as the platform for managing SAP technical changes. Rev-Trac Platinum is its flagship SAP change and release management solution.
Rather than using a newly created transport as the starting point, RSC pioneered using the request for change (Rev-Trac Request) as the starting point.
As transports are created to fulfil the request, they are attached to the request and managed as a group, overcoming the need to manage transports one at a time. It greatly simplified the process enabling teams to manage changes rather than transports.
This change request concept has enabled the vendor to meet the evolving needs of SAP change teams without developing functionality outside of the base solution.
ActiveControl (Basis Technologies)
DevOps and Testing for SAP - Basis Technologies
Basis Technologies, a UK-based software and services company, took a different approach. It’s change management approach was for the change process to start life as a transport request. As the vendor’s original name for the product, Transport Express, suggests, it was a tool to help the basis team manage an error-prone manual transport management process.
However, as the need changed from basic transport management to more complex change management, a similar change request method of managing the interrelated transports was introduced.
To cover some of the new requirements, several integrated function modules were added and the name changed to ActiveControl, to better reflect the overall capability of the product.
Although in a different way to Rev-Trac, ActiveControl meets the needs of modern SAP change teams.
SmartChange (REALTECH)
SmartChange - SAP Change Management Simplified
REALTECH, a German-based software and services company, created Transport Manager (now SmartChange) at around the same time as the other two.
Unfortunately, although an additional module was developed to facilitate managing transports in a 5-system N+1 landscape, the product hasn’t evolved much beyond its original transport automation purpose.
Although SmartChange can be configured to manage some of the more recent requirements, SmartChange remains a transport management tool geared towards the SAP basis team.
Final word
SAP change and release management has evolved from basic SAP transport automation into something quite different and software vendors have had to progress their solutions to help SAP teams meet new and different needs. Having several third-party vendor solutions available provides SAP teams with options.
Rarely does one-size fit all and SAP teams. Having options means a team can select a solution that best suits their approach.
To learn more about SAP IT automation, see www.legupsoftware.com
