Obsolescence Risk Management Capabilities

Overview

Obsolete technology no longer maintained or supported carries the risk of breaches, increased downtimes, and system crashes. These issues can result in financial losses, damage to reputation, and regulatory consequences. Obsolescence risk management is the process of identifying, evaluating, and managing the risks associated with technological obsolescence.

SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance enables you to proactively identify, assess, and manage risks associated with your technology infrastructure. Its integration with ServiceNow and custom integration with other CMDBs allows for the automatic discovery of IT components, creating a comprehensive inventory of your technology layer. Additionally, for IT components, the product provides access to lifecycle information from the reference catalog, offering insights into lifecycle states, version details, and support information needed to continuously monitor obsolescence risk.

The relationships between IT components and business layer artifacts, as defined in the meta model, allow for the assessment of unaddressed risks in the business context. Through reports, you can identify, analyze, and prioritize obsolescence risks, focusing on 'end-of-life' concerns and business criticality. Additionally, a dedicated dashboard offers transparency and insights for effective monitoring and measuring progress. With a holistic overview of obsolescence risk exposure, you can allocate resources efficiently to plan and address the risks effectively and ensure operational stability and business continuity.

For a detailed guide on how you can manage obsolescence risk, see Obsolescence Risk Management.

Obsolescence Risk Management Capabilities

Automated IT Component Discovery and Update

SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance provides integration with ServiceNow. This integration automates the discovery of IT components and applications and helps you build your technology inventory swiftly.

Real-time mapping ensures up-to-date information on the underlying technology, providing enhanced risk visibility. To learn more, see Integration with ServiceNow.

Vendor-Provided Lifecycle Information for IT Components

SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance offers vendor-provided lifecycle and end-of-support information for IT component fact sheets from the SAP LeanIX reference catalog.

Vendor-provided lifecycle information is updated in dedicated vendor lifecycle fields. This ensures that you can maintain distinct internal lifecycles when operational dependencies or your organizational IT strategy requires a different timeline.

You can override the vendor-provided end-of-life data if your organization has different maintenance coverage by the vendor or for any other reason. This allows you to capture your own custom vendor end-of-life information along with its relevant context.

Both vendor and internal lifecycle information are considered and aggregated to assess the obsolescence risk statuses of applications. This enables effective end-of-life asset management and supports proactive decisions on upgrades, transformations, or replacements for obsolescence risk management. To learn more about obsolescence risk aggregation and statuses, see Obsolescence Risk View Aggregation.

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Note

Before vendor lifecycle fields were introduced, vendor-provided lifecycle information was synchronized from the reference catalog to the internal lifecycle fields.

The recent product improvements do not impact existing values in the internal lifecycle fields. However, if you have reports, integrations, or automations that rely on internal lifecycle fields, you can choose to continue synchronizing vendor-provided lifecycle data to both the internal lifecycle fields and vendor lifecycle fields until you make the necessary changes to address dependencies.

This option will be available until September 2025. For a detailed guide and best practices, see Vendor Lifecycle Fields Transition Best Practices.

Additional Obsolescence Risk Management Views in Reports

The following additional obsolescence risk management views are added to reports, helping you better analyze and prioritize technological risks:

• Mitigated risk: Helps organizations to assess how effectively they've addressed and reduced risks.
• Missing data: Helps identify gaps in available information critical for risk evaluation, enabling focused data completion efforts.
• Unaddressed risk percentages: Helps prioritize and tackle risks that still require attention.

For a more detailed guide, see Technology Obsolescence Risk Views in Reports.

Dedicated Obsolescence Risk Management Dashboard

A dedicated obsolescence risk management dashboard provides a centralized overview with relevant KPIs for monitoring the progress of your risk management initiatives. It helps you effectively share the progress and insights with stakeholders to provide transparency and foster deeper engagement.

For a more detailed guide, see Obsolescence Risk Management Dashboard.