Maintenance certificates/licenses - where will this all end?

[Former Member]

According to

1240265 - SPAM, SAINT no valid maintenance certificate found

1236587 - JSPM - no valid maintenance certificate found

it´s necessary to install aside from a license an additional certificate from january 1st, 2009 to be able to install patches.

SAP-PM-guys, are you really serious? Why can´t the "normal license" cover that?

ST-A/PI is not installed on our system due to many problems during UC-migrations and upgrades in the past so an automatic distribution is not possible - and works only for ABAP systems.

I really wonder if that is the new strategical alignment of the "Enterprise support" à la "If you want to apply note XYZ you need to first install a valid license for that note..."

(Sorry for cynicism).

Markus

[former_member209604]

Hi Marcus,

ST-A/PI is not required for the Automatic Distribution of Maintenance Certificates through SAP Solution Manager.

The functionality for the Managed Systems (ABAP) will be shipped via ST-PI Support Packages.

See also the information page in SAP Support Portal:

[www.service.sap.com/maintenancecertificate|www.service.sap.com/maintenancecertificate]

Best regards,

Ruediger

[markus_doehr2]

ST-PI is even worse since it has dependencies to PI_BASIS which has dependencies to SAP_BASIS....

Markus

[former_member209604]

Hi Markus,

ST-PI 2005_1_700 Support Packages require previous ST-PI SP.

The installation itself requires very low SAP_BASIS, SAP_ABA SP.

There are no dependencies on PI_BASIS.

Best regards,

Ruediger

[markus_doehr2]

Either way - all systems have to be touched, for the upgrade/patching of the *PI* or by manually installing the "certificates" (plus all the Java instances).

This sucks, especially with the knowledge in mind, that it's mainly to apply corrections for problems you (= SAP) produces plus the fact, that the time one needs to do that is "critical", one may not be able to patch the PI high enough before SPAM denies to do so because there is no certificate...

sigh

Markus

[Former Member]

Yes, I agree with Marcus. This is a huge pain and inconveinence. We have time critical updates to systems and now I have to spend time fooling around with a NON PRODUCTIVE system such as Solution Manager just to be able to update said systems.

I don't necessarily agree with the path that is being taken.

Please consider removing this burden ASAP and let us folks get on with our lives and more important concerns of the customers.

[Former Member]

hi,

Even i agree with Ben.

We are spending our time for the nonsense Solution Manager.

We can't blame our company for that as SAp is providing it free for the client, clients are insisting on using the solution manager.

[markus_doehr2]

We are spending our time for the nonsense Solution Manager.

I would say:

The idea of having a central tool (SolMan) is very good, I appreciate that.

However, it´s way too cumbersome to set up. The decision of using an underlying CRM was the worst that could have happen. CRM is one of the most complex software products SAP has to offer. If that would have been a NEW software not based on something that complex it would have been way better.

E. g. MOPZ - necessary since april 2007 - and even after almost 2 years of development and support packages it is still not able to deal correctly with hotfixes in Java instances. I had a call open and I was told that this will be fixed "sometimes Q1 - Q2 2009". If I still have to manually download and maintain equivalent hotfixes manually plus the fact, that I can download the stack using that nice application in the download center, what is the added value we get from SolMan/MOPZ? For me personally MOPZ in SolMan is condemned untrustworthy.

We can't blame our company for that as SAp is providing it free for the client, clients are insisting on using the solution manager.

Client insist on it because SAP forces them to. If clients have no Solution Manager they will not be able to apply support packages that contain legal changes, they won´t even get them in the first place. Now they need this additional certificate to install them and to get this certificate they need to set up SolMan. To set up that, they need hardware and depending on their knowledge consultants and additional resources.

I still download the certificates manually when we have the need to patch a system. Even if I would need to repeat that several times a year it is less cumbersome than trying to get dependencies right and fiddle with collection notes, notes versions, informational notes and troubleshooting reports.

Many customers core business (let ISVs aside) is not running and maintaining software but something very different. If we are obliged to run an additional software it must be so, that it won´t cost us more than not running it. It´s a bit antagonistic to try to strike complexity with even more complexity.

People here and in the OSS/CSS are very helpful (e. g. Rüdiger) and I´m sure all that SolMan can be set up and be made a really good tool - but the difference between those people and the customers is, that those people have not the need to run other systems, to make sure the core business systems are running and doing well. If I had the time to concentrate each day 8 hours with SolMan over some weeks, I´m sure I would make it but I don´t have that time and there´s no chance we will get additional resources for that.

Markus