Ever since SAP released its offi­cial announce­ment about its new doc­u­ments-based licens­ing mod­el in ear­ly April, we’ve been receiv­ing lots of ques­tions from ASUG mem­bers about the changes. But we’ve seen some com­mon themes emerge from all of them. To help oth­ers in the SAP com­mu­ni­ty who might be ask­ing them­selves the same things, we’re shar­ing the top six most com­mon ques­tions and their answers here.

This is a com­plex top­ic that needs some real-world sce­nar­ios to help us all bet­ter under­stand it. So please keep your ques­tions com­ing. If you don’t see the answers you need, send your own to licensing@​asug.​com or watch our web­cast on demand to hear the ques­tions your peers are asking.

Q. Is the way I’m cur­rent­ly using my ERP sys­tem an exam­ple of indi­rect use?

A. If you are engag­ing your SAP sys­tems in any way that does not involve human users, there’s a good chance it is an exam­ple of indi­rect use (also known as indi­rect access). All use, whether it’s by humans or by inter­faces, bots, EDIs, Inter­net of Things (IoT) net­works, or sim­i­lar sce­nar­ios must be appro­pri­ate­ly licensed and doc­u­ment­ed in your SAP contract.

SAP defines indi­rect use as ​“when peo­ple or things use the Dig­i­tal Core with­out direct­ly log­ging into the system.”

Pos­si­ble indi­rect access exam­ples include any data that comes into an SAP sys­tem that’s cre­at­ed or updat­ed through an exter­nal inter­face such as EDIs, BAPIs, APIs, or XIPI, for example.

At the most basic lev­el, you should ful­ly under­stand how data is get­ting into your SAP sys­tems, and whether you have the appro­pri­ate enti­tle­ments writ­ten into your con­tract. That’s the only way to be sure you’re not at risk of expo­sure to unli­censed use.

We know that there will be many sce­nar­ios that may be dif­fi­cult to cat­e­go­rize clean­ly as direct or indi­rect use. Reach out to us at licensing@​asug.​com if you have a spe­cif­ic sce­nario you’re look­ing to bet­ter under­stand, and we’ll get to the bot­tom of it.

If you’re look­ing to get edu­cat­ed, you’ll find a lot more details about SAP’s def­i­n­i­tions of indi­rect and direct use in our SAP Licens­ing 101 article.

Q. What SAP prod­ucts are cov­ered under the new doc­u­ments-based licens­ing model?

A. The doc­u­ments-based licens­ing mod­el applies to ERP sys­tems only.

If you’re appro­pri­ate­ly licensed to use oth­er cloud-based SAP prod­ucts, then the input or trans­fer of data between these prod­ucts and your ERP sys­tems will be includ­ed at no addi­tion­al charge.

Q. What if I use a third-par­ty prod­uct or SAP-cer­ti­fied solu­tion? How do I know if I’m appro­pri­ate­ly licensed for the way my sys­tems are interacting?

A. If you’re appro­pri­ate­ly licensed for prod­ucts pur­chased through your SAP account exec­u­tive and con­tract, you like­ly will not have an indi­rect access issue.

If you have third-par­ty cer­ti­fied prod­ucts pur­chased direct­ly from the third par­ty, you may not be appro­pri­ate­ly licensed to mod­i­fy SAP data using that tool. If you’re unsure of whether you have the right enti­tle­ments, it’s in your best inter­est to reach out to that third-par­ty part­ner and SAP to clar­i­fy whether you have the appro­pri­ate enti­tle­ments in place to use these prod­ucts with your ERP systems.

Q. I’ve heard that SAP now has a price list for its new doc­u­ments-based licens­ing mod­el. How can I get access to this price list?

A. You’ll need to reach out to your SAP account exec­u­tive. SAP does not cur­rent­ly have a pub­licly avail­able price list. SAP’s pric­ing tends to be high­ly cus­tomized for each cus­tomer and con­tract, and the pric­ing that results from these nego­ti­a­tions is con­sid­ered con­fi­den­tial for each customer.

What we can share with you is that there are mul­ti­ple tiers on the price list based on the total num­ber of doc­u­ments that your busi­ness gen­er­ates. There’s a price for each doc­u­ment, regard­less of which of the nine doc­u­ment types you cre­ate. Finan­cial doc­u­ments and one oth­er doc­u­ment type are priced at 20% of the oth­er sev­en doc­u­ment types. To illus­trate this, if the cost per doc­u­ment were hypo­thet­i­cal­ly $1, then the cost for a finan­cial doc­u­ment would be $0.20.

Q. If my com­pa­ny decides to switch to the doc­u­ments-based mod­el from the named user-based mod­el, how would this work? Would the same dis­count we’ve already nego­ti­at­ed in our cur­rent con­tract be applied to a license exchange?

A. The license exchange approach SAP has described is a ​“net to net” con­ver­sion. If you have gone through license exchanges in the past, you will know that these are always sub­ject to intense nego­ti­a­tions. These are typ­i­cal­ly not straight­for­ward, espe­cial­ly if you have licens­ing enti­tle­ments that span mul­ti­ple con­tracts or appendices.

You have two options to con­vert to the doc­u­ment-based licens­ing mod­el. The first option is to sim­ply con­vert exist­ing enti­tle­ments to doc­u­ments and keep your exist­ing con­tracts. SAP would issue an appen­dix to your con­tract that details this exchange. The oth­er option is to con­vert to the Sim­pli­fied SAP S/4HANA con­tract, which would require rene­go­ti­a­tion of any spe­cial terms and con­di­tions you have nego­ti­at­ed for in the past.

Q. If I’m inter­est­ed in licens­ing as a top­ic, how can I get involved? Do you have an asso­ci­at­ed com­mu­ni­ty or Spe­cial Inter­est Group (SIG)?

A. We don’t have a SIG set up, but you can sub­scribe to this top­ic stream to receive future updates. Just vis­it our Licens­ing Resource Cen­ter and fill out the form near the bot­tom of the page. (Look for ​“SAP Licens­ing Ques­tions? We Can Help.”)

We’ll be post­ing new record­ed web­casts reg­u­lar­ly on the Licens­ing Resource Cen­ter. We’ll also con­tin­ue to pub­lish more arti­cles, as we hear more from cus­tomers about the new pric­ing mod­el and its effects. If you have an idea about a good top­ic to cov­er, please send your sug­ges­tions to licensing@​asug.​com.

Licens­ing has already been a hot top­ic with­in ASUG’s Exec­u­tive Exchange. We’d love to have some­one from your exec­u­tive team join us at one of our nation­al or local events. 

How to Get Answers to Your Licens­ing Questions

Lis­ten to our record­ed webi­nar, where cus­tomers had the chance to ask ASUG CEO Geoff Scott and Ron Gilson, CIO of John­sonville Sausage, their ques­tions about SAP licens­ing changes.

You can also vis­it our Licens­ing Resource Cen­ter for our lat­est cov­er­age of this topic.

And you can always send your ques­tions to licensing@​asug.​com. Your com­ments and obser­va­tions will help shape our con­ver­sa­tions as we con­tin­ue to engage with SAP on licens­ing-relat­ed topics.