Look­ing for the lat­est updates on the top­ic of indi­rect access and SAP licens­ing? Vis­it ASUG­’s Licens­ing Resource Cen­ter.

Since Sep­tem­ber 2017, ASUG and oth­er glob­al user groups (includ­ing DSAG and SUG­EN) have brought the voice of the cus­tomer into some cru­cial dis­cus­sions and deci­sions at SAP to address mount­ing con­cerns we were hear­ing with­in the SAP user com­mu­ni­ty around licens­ing and sales prac­tices. Lead­er­ship at SAP active­ly engaged with us in these dis­cus­sions and fre­quent­ly ref­er­enced objec­tives that ASUG set out to guide the conversation. 

Through the process, ASUG remained focused on what we con­sid­er the top three objectives:

• Define and clar­i­fy the key terms relat­ed to licens­ing, espe­cial­ly indi­rect access (also known as indi­rect use).
• Iden­ti­fy the actions cus­tomers can take to under­stand whether they’re com­pli­ant based on these definitions. 
• Explain what cus­tomers can do if they find licens­ing gaps. 

ASUG’s Take on the SAP Licens­ing Discussion

So, where are we now? Over­all, we believe we’ve made sub­stan­tial progress in these three areas: 

1. The For­mal Sep­a­ra­tion of Sales and Audit: Based on the input of ASUG and oth­er user groups, SAP made sig­nif­i­cant orga­ni­za­tion­al and pol­i­cy changes to move all audit-relat­ed deci­sions and activ­i­ties to a sep­a­rate glob­al audit orga­ni­za­tion. Now, any audit must come from SAP’s audit team and can’t be ini­ti­at­ed as a sales tac­tic. SAP has also pro­vid­ed clar­i­ty on what to expect from an audit. We believe this change will result in a much bet­ter sales and audit expe­ri­ence for SAP cus­tomers. As a cus­tomer com­mu­ni­ty, we feel strong­ly that we need more aware­ness and trans­paren­cy in the audit dialogue. 

2. Clar­i­fi­ca­tion of Indi­rect Access/​Use: The most dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions we had with SAP revolved around get­ting clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the indi­rect access lan­guage in most cus­tomer con­tracts and SAP’s posi­tion that ​“use is use and all use must be licensed.” This is a high­ly sen­si­tive top­ic on both sides. SAP firm­ly believes they have the right to mon­e­tize and pro­tect their intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, while cus­tomers know they need to be able to pro­tect and lever­age their past invest­ments. ASUG con­tin­ued to push these con­ver­sa­tions for­ward until we felt that cus­tomers would be able to ful­ly under­stand SAP’s def­i­n­i­tions. SAP has now clar­i­fied the exist­ing lan­guage that defines what it views as indi­rect access, as well as the intent behind it. SAP also out­lined mul­ti­ple sce­nar­ios to help cus­tomers under­stand how indi­rect use would appear as com­mon use cas­es with­in their IT operations. 

3. A Future-Ori­ent­ed Pric­ing Mod­el: SAP has intro­duced a new licens­ing mod­el that includes a way to address some of the new dig­i­tal chal­lenges that come from indi­rect use through tech­nolo­gies like EDIs, APIs, bots, IoT sen­sors, and more. Rather than mea­sur­ing use by the num­ber of ​“hands on key­board” users, the new mod­el counts the total num­ber of doc­u­ments cre­at­ed through indi­rect meth­ods and licens­ing. This new doc­u­ment-based pric­ing mod­el pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for sim­pli­fied licens­es in the future or for net-new cus­tomers. Cus­tomers with exist­ing con­tracts and con­tract lan­guage will need to eval­u­ate the costs, ben­e­fits, and over­all val­ue of a license con­ver­sion. ASUG rec­og­nizes that this con­ver­sion will not be easy for cus­tomers who have an extend­ed his­to­ry with SAP, as con­tracts can be long, com­pli­cat­ed, and con­sist of mul­ti­ple appen­dices signed over mul­ti­ple decades. 

We are mak­ing progress, but this is a jour­ney that will take some time to com­plete. Most impor­tant­ly, ASUG will con­tin­ue to active­ly engage in a dia­logue with SAP regard­ing licens­ing prac­tices and poli­cies. That will not stop. The recent announce­ments are just an impor­tant first step for­ward for SAP and their customers. 

How the User Groups Got Involved

In 2017, a cou­ple of law­suits against SAP cus­tomers sent rip­ples of anx­i­ety through the user com­mu­ni­ty and raised dif­fi­cult ques­tions relat­ed to indi­rect access. At ASUG, we were con­cerned about the lack of a clear def­i­n­i­tion from SAP about what it con­sid­ers indi­rect access and what con­sti­tutes non-com­pli­ance. So, we sent a let­ter in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the glob­al user groups to the SAP board of direc­tors, let­ting them know that this top­ic need­ed to be dis­cussed and resolved. 

As a result of the let­ter, ASUG and oth­er glob­al user groups (includ­ing DSAG and SUG­EN) were invit­ed to Wall­dorf in late 2017 to begin a dia­logue on the broad top­ic of licens­ing. As we start­ed our dis­cus­sions, more issues sur­faced relat­ed to sales and audit prac­tices, espe­cial­ly for long-stand­ing cus­tomers who were like­ly to be most affect­ed by poten­tial licens­ing issues. We dug in and remained com­mit­ted to resolv­ing these issues. We joined week­ly con­fer­ence calls. We debat­ed the mean­ing of indi­rect use with­in the con­text of today’s inter­con­nect­ed tech­nol­o­gy. We reviewed doc­u­ments and sent our feed­back. We con­tin­ue to take this top­ic very seri­ous­ly and plan to work on it until the cus­tomers in our com­mu­ni­ty under­stand it ful­ly — a process that we expect will take some time. 

What the Test of Time Will Say

What can SAP do bet­ter? The new licens­ing mod­el is a step in the right direc­tion, but cus­tomers need more help eval­u­at­ing whether the old user-dri­ven mod­el or the new doc­u­ment-based mod­el will be best for their busi­ness. Can­did­ly, the new doc­u­ment-based mod­el doesn’t have the test of time behind it yet, so there are a lot of unknowns. As cus­tomers begin the licens­ing con­ver­sion process with SAP, new ques­tions about these def­i­n­i­tions and the val­ue of the new licens­ing mod­el will undoubt­ed­ly arise. 

The def­i­n­i­tions around licens­ing may be set, but help­ing cus­tomers under­stand whether they’re com­pli­ant or not is an area where we still have gaps. This is an issue that, unfor­tu­nate­ly, could affect the cus­tomers that have been the most loy­al and most com­mit­ted to SAP for decades. New cus­tomers won’t need to wor­ry about the issues that come from old con­tracts that haven’t evolved to keep up with the customer’s lat­est dig­i­tal busi­ness mod­el. Cus­tomers may feel forced to fig­ure this out on their own, but ASUG is an inde­pen­dent, neu­tral par­ty that can help.

What’s Next for SAP Licens­ing at ASUG?

The bot­tom line is that we have a lev­el of clar­i­ty that we did not have a year ago. We don’t have all the answers. But we at ASUG have pushed for a frame­work of how to think about and resolve these issues. 

We’re going to take that frame­work and share what we know so far. In return, we’d like to ask a few things from you, our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers. We’d love to hear about some of the licens­ing and audit sce­nar­ios that your orga­ni­za­tion has faced. We encour­age you to ask us ques­tions. And we’d like to take your anony­mous feed­back to SAP as we con­tin­ue to dis­cuss this top­ic. If there’s some­thing you’re wor­ried about or don’t quite under­stand, let us know. Hear­ing about your real-life exam­ples is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to us. 

We’re ful­ly com­mit­ted to con­tin­u­ing this dia­logue so it doesn’t slip back into the dark­ness. When the voice of the cus­tomer goes qui­et, it’s very dif­fi­cult to make this kind of change. A pas­sion­ate and engaged cus­tomer base unit­ed in a com­mon com­mu­ni­ty is a pow­er­ful force for change. Indi­vid­u­al­ly, each one of us has a lim­it­ed voice, but col­lec­tive­ly we have a very strong voice as ASUG. Please or join the con­ver­sa­tions about this going on with­in our com­mu­ni­ty. There’s a lot more to come from us on this topic. 

Reach out to ASUG with your ques­tions at licensing@​asug.​com. To learn more about SAP’s new licens­ing mod­el and asso­ci­at­ed def­i­n­i­tions, vis­it our licens­ing resource cen­ter.