The Software Update Manager supports downtime-optimized approaches for some scenarios for updating SAP Business Suite.

In the past years, the approaches to minimize downtime have evolved significantly. Among the approaches shipped along with Software Update Manager 2.0, there are three main approaches for applying release upgrades, support package stacks, and feature package stacks:

Both, the standard approach and the near-Zero Downtime Maintenance (nZDM) include major improvements for minimizing the technical downtime. However, the technical downtime cannot be reduced with the standard approach and also not with nZDM. This can be achieved with the Zero Downtime Option (ZDO) of SUM as the next level of downtime-optimization.

Note, however, that the more you want to optimize the downtime, the more effort you have in the project. The effort includes both the project planning effort and the testing effort, which is higher for zero downtime updates.

You can get an overview about the different approaches and scenarios on the SAP Support Portal at https://support.sap.com/en/tools/software-logistics-tools/software-update-manager.html#section.