Today, ASUG is excit­ed to team up with DSAG and SAP to announce the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram (DAAP). This new pro­gram is designed to help cus­tomers move to the dig­i­tal access license mod­el. Accord­ing to Robin Man­herz, SVP of glob­al port­fo­lio plan­ning and com­mer­cial­iza­tion at SAP, the new pro­gram promis­es ​“to remove uncer­tain­ty or trep­i­da­tion asso­ci­at­ed with his­toric trans­ac­tions, audits, and/​or nego­ti­at­ed indi­rect licens­ing terms that may have, over time, become dif­fi­cult for cus­tomers and SAP to suc­cinct­ly rationalize.”

A Clear Path to SAP Licensing

This is a major move for­ward to help cus­tomers under­stand and mit­i­gate the risk of poten­tial indi­rect access com­pli­ance issues. And, more impor­tant­ly, it pro­vides a clear path, so your orga­ni­za­tion is pre­pared for the trans­for­ma­tion projects you’ll need to stay com­pet­i­tive in the future.

While you may not greet all of this news with cheers, rest assured that we are far clear­er on the top­ic of indi­rect access than we ever have been. We remain com­mit­ted to work­ing with SAP on behalf of cus­tomers. This is a jour­ney that dates back to 2017 when ASUG and DSAG brought the customer’s point of view to our dis­cus­sions with SAP as we pushed for trans­paren­cy around licens­ing and indi­rect use.

Solv­ing the EDI Licens­ing Puzzle

One of the most fre­quent­ly asked ques­tions from ASUG Mem­bers about SAP’s dig­i­tal access pol­i­cy is how EDI fits in. Can­did­ly, the licens­ing of EDI over the years has been a chal­lenge for many cus­tomers. Some have allo­cat­ed user-based licens­ing to cov­er EDI, oth­ers have pur­chased licens­es such as Sales Order Pro­cess­ing, and some have assumed that EDI is cov­ered by XI or PI solu­tions or is sim­ply includ­ed in their ECC entitlements.

How to appro­pri­ate­ly license EDI has been a top­ic that ASUG and oth­er glob­al user groups have been wrestling with SAP on since the ini­tial dig­i­tal access announce­ments in April 2018 when SAP intro­duced this new pric­ing mod­el. ASUG’s quest for a rea­son­able answer is a jour­ney that has tak­en many twists and turns that includ­ed some stress­ful meet­ings and heat­ed dis­cus­sions with SAP.

What We’ve Learned About Indi­rect Access

Let’s begin here: Trans­ac­tions cre­at­ed in an SAP sys­tem (ECC or SAP S/4HANA) through EDI are con­sid­ered indi­rect access. That’s pret­ty bold and direct. This may even take you aback. Yet it is impor­tant to under­stand this: If your orga­ni­za­tion is cre­at­ing, read­ing, updat­ing, or delet­ing records in ECC or SAP S/4HANA through EDI or any oth­er type of inter­face, this meets the def­i­n­i­tion of indi­rect access unless you’ve specif­i­cal­ly licensed that activ­i­ty. Just like direct (hands on key­board) access, indi­rect access requires a license in some way, shape, or form.

SAP intro­duced the dig­i­tal access license mod­el in 2018 to make it eas­i­er to license sce­nar­ios like these. This is also known as the doc­u­ments-based licens­ing mod­el because of the nine doc­u­ment types that trig­ger a charge when they’re cre­at­ed. Full details on SAP’s mod­el are avail­able here.

Start with the Doc­u­ment Counts

Now that we have clar­i­fied what indi­rect access is, the next ques­tion should be, how much trans­ac­tion­al vol­ume is my organization’s EDI and/​or inter­face activ­i­ty cre­at­ing? The good news is that there are now two ways to deter­mine this, known in SAP lan­guage as mea­sur­a­bil­i­ty.

The first mea­sur­a­bil­i­ty option is an esti­ma­tion tool deliv­ered through SAP Notes. Once applied, these notes will pro­vide reports that esti­mate the vol­ume of doc­u­ments you’re cre­at­ing. Keep in mind that these are esti­mates and may require some effort to fine-tune. As part of the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram, SAP will pro­vide resources from its Glob­al License Audit and Com­pli­ance (GLAC) team to help you adjust and val­i­date these estimates.

The sec­ond mea­sur­a­bil­i­ty option requires you to imple­ment ser­vice packs to install the SAP Pass­port tech­ni­cal com­po­nents. Once installed on the appro­pri­ate sys­tems, the SAP Pass­port tech­nol­o­gy will begin track­ing the actu­al num­ber of doc­u­ments you’re cre­at­ing through indi­rect access. Be aware that get­ting an accu­rate count will take some time though, as the SAP Pass­port tech­nol­o­gy will only count doc­u­ments that you gen­er­ate after the point of installation.

Know Your SAP Contracts

Once you are com­fort­able with the vol­ume of trans­ac­tions your orga­ni­za­tion is cre­at­ing, you can assess your cur­rent license lev­els to sup­port this vol­ume. Deter­min­ing this requires you to under­stand your SAP con­tracts and how your licens­es are allo­cat­ed to your var­i­ous activ­i­ties. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, ASUG has found that cus­tomer licens­ing prac­tices are diverse and com­plex, so it’s impos­si­ble to pro­vide a one-size-fits-all answer here.

Based on your under­stand­ing of your cur­rent con­tract, you can decide how you want to allo­cate licens­es to any indi­rect access areas that may turn up. And SAP now offers guide­lines that will give you an approx­i­mate con­ver­sion to a dig­i­tal access license.

Are You Right, Over, or Under Licensed? 

Fol­low­ing these steps out­lined here, you can now deter­mine if your orga­ni­za­tion is right licensed, over licensed, or under licensed. If you are right or over licensed, it is up to you if you want to ini­ti­ate a for­mal con­ver­sion to the dig­i­tal access license mod­el based on your project pri­or­i­ties and any iden­ti­fied com­pli­ance risk. Keep in mind that any new dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion projects or inno­va­tions that you have planned in the near future may affect what you’re cur­rent­ly licensed for. This is why ASUG always advo­cates that cus­tomers know what they own and what they’re licensed to do with it.

If you find that you are under licensed or you sim­ply want to move to the dig­i­tal access license mod­el, the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram offers two finan­cial­ly attrac­tive options. Deter­min­ing which option best fits your needs is based on your cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, expect­ed growth rates for your orga­ni­za­tion, and your busi­ness case. There’s a lot more detail on both of these options in this blog post on the pro­gram from SAP.

The Time to Make a Licens­ing Change Is Now

ASUG rec­om­mends that you deter­mine your lev­el of license com­pli­ance with­in the next six months — and cer­tain­ly in advance of your 2020 bud­get­ing process. Why? If you hap­pen to deter­mine that you are under licensed, the two options avail­able to resolve this with SAP have a time lim­it of one year (expir­ing in May 2020). Giv­en that it will take time to under­stand your cur­rent indi­rect access expo­sure, cur­rent licens­ing enti­tle­ments, and nego­ti­a­tions to update your license — you have very lit­tle time to spare. Start­ing now will help make sure you and your orga­ni­za­tion is pre­pared to make the best decision.

SAP is offer­ing addi­tion­al resources through GLAC and your account exec­u­tive to help you bet­ter under­stand your options, should you decide to par­tic­i­pate in the pro­gram. And ASUG is here to lend our sup­port and to con­nect you with peers who are going through sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions. ASUG, DSAG, and SAP are eager to make sure SAP cus­tomers under­stand the ben­e­fits of this pro­gram and how it can help you find a path for­ward to resolve indi­rect access ques­tions once and for all.

What’s the Right Move for You?

If you believe you may be fac­ing indi­rect access com­pli­ance risk, you have these options: You can choose to do noth­ing. You can eval­u­ate your doc­u­ment use and choose to stay with your exist­ing license, adding named users or oth­er license enti­tle­ments to cov­er your licens­ing gap. Or you can eval­u­ate your use and decide to move to the dig­i­tal access mod­el. There are pros and cons to each of these sce­nar­ios. But if you think you need to move, now is the time to seri­ous­ly con­sid­er the ben­e­fits you’ll get from SAP’s Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Program.

Progress Through Collaboration

As men­tioned, this has been a wind­ing road. ASUG extends a big thank you to every­one on the SAP Licens­ing Team for their hard work cham­pi­oning this top­ic inter­nal­ly. The team was open to hear­ing opin­ions from ASUG and oth­er user groups, which pre­sent­ed con­sol­i­dat­ed feed­back from cus­tomers around the world. We did not always agree on every point, but we did agree that pro­vid­ing cus­tomers a path for­ward was crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant. Col­lec­tive­ly, we believe we have clar­i­fied SAP’s posi­tion and devel­oped a rea­son­able approach to this issue. Now we need to hear your thoughts and feed­back about whether this pro­gram is help­ful to you.

This pro­gram has sup­port across SAP from the high­est lev­els. ​“The Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram (DAAP) is an amaz­ing achieve­ment since we intro­duced licens­ing for indi­rect access back in April 2018. This was only pos­si­ble thanks to the close col­lab­o­ra­tion and fruit­ful part­ner­ship with our user groups. I am cer­tain our cus­tomers will see tremen­dous ben­e­fits from this team effort,” said Chris­t­ian Klein, mem­ber of the exec­u­tive board and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer, SAP.

Con­nect with Us on this Topic

We rec­om­mend that you read SAP’s blog on the SAP Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram and the Enter­prise Appli­ca­tions Focus Report on this top­ic from Joshua Green­baum. We also will be dis­cussing this in a ses­sion at SAP­PHIRE NOW and ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence and in fol­low-up web­casts that will be broad­cast in late May and ear­ly June. In the mean­time, we wel­come your feed­back and ques­tions on the dig­i­tal access mod­el, the Dig­i­tal Access Adop­tion Pro­gram, and oth­er indi­rect access issues.

Vis­it our Licens­ing Resource Cen­ter for in-depth cov­er­age of this top­ic. You can also send your ques­tions to licensing@​asug.​com or reg­is­ter for one of our licens­ing web­casts for ASUG Members.