SAP’s Support Backbone is the central infrastructure located at SAP to provide technical support to our customers. SAP plans to finalise the update of the Support Backbone by 1 January 2020, but customers must take action before this date to ensure a smooth transition.

What happens during this update?

Besides technical system upgrades, the most important changes are upgrading to https communication and enabling server certificates to use SSL. This update affects SAP Solution Manager and SAP systems which are communicating with the SAP Support Backbone.

Which actions do you have to take?

Customers need to take the following actions (depending on their current situation):

Situation 1: Customer system is already on SAP Solution Manager 7.2:
– Implement SPS07 (plus additional SAP Notes) or implement SPS08.

Situation 2: Customer system is still on SAP Solution Manager 7.1:
– Request a technical S-User
– Upgrade to SAP Solution Manager 7.2 SPS07 (plus additional SAP Notes) or upgrade to SAP Solution Manager 7.2 SPS08.

If these actions are prepared well in advance, no activities have to be done on January 1st, 2020. On this date only the backend changes come into effect.

Which SAP Solution Manager scenarios are currently impacted?
– Landscape Management
– Landscape synchronisation
– Maintenance Planner (automated system information update)
– Remote Service Connections from SAP Solution Manager (more information)
– System Recommendations

Test Suite
– Scope and Effort Analyser (SEA)

IT Service Management
– Incident Management (exchange of incidents with SAP)

SAP Engagement and Service Delivery
– Engagements and Sessions
– SAP EarlyWatch Alert (EWA) from SAP Solution Manager to SAP
– Service Content Update

It is important to prepare your system as after 1st January, 2020, SAP Solution Manager systems on SP stack level lower than SPS07 will not communicate with the SAP Support Backbone anymore. 

Our Basis experts are already working with customers to help them prepare for these changes, please do not hesitate to get in touch for a no obligation discussion on your planned updates.