ITASCA, IL--(Marketwired - March 09, 2017) - Enterprises can learn more about managing SAP licenses with Flexera's on-demand Pull out All the Stops and Make the Right Decisions for SAP License Management Webinar, presented in conjunction with KPMG, for gaining transparency on SAP indirect access licenses, optimizing named-user licenses and business packages and finding more ways to manage SAP licenses.
ISSUE: The recent SAP UK vs. Diageo Great Britain court decision is yet another software licensing lawsuit between large vendors and their customers. Enterprise software licensing agreements are complex documents. Companies license software products based on many different license metrics -- including a quantity of named users or devices, fixed count of processors in a server, etc. In many software licensing models, once enterprises go above the number of licensed users/devices/processors, they are out of compliance. In most cases, the use of unlicensed copies of software by customers is unintentional -- due to contract, product-use rights and license model complexity.
One particular area of licensing confusion can occur when there is uncertainty over what qualifies as a "named user."
In SAP UK vs. Diageo Great Britain, the High Court of England and Wales ruled in favor of SAP UK, which sought a claim of over £55 million against the beverage giant Diageo for "indirect users." This has huge implications for large companies that have integrated customer-facing systems with SAP databases. Since 2004, Diageo had licensed mySAP Business Suite based on a number of named users. A few years ago, Diageo then created two new customer-facing applications on the Salesforce platform to access Diageo's mySAP implementation through a SAP Process Integration (SAP PI) interface which was also licensed. The dispute was whether the license fee for SAP PI allowed Diageo's sales staff and customers to access SAP data through Salesforce applications, or if they needed to have SAP Named User licenses.
The ruling held that user-license fees also apply to Diageo's 5,800 indirect users, exposing them to an additional license fee almost equal to the total amount paid to SAP for all previous software and services. Therefore the court said that Diageo must pay to license all of these users -- affirming the SAP indirect license model.
However, if an enterprise's direct access named users also have access to SAP data via indirect applications, only one license is required. And, if the enterprise has users with accounts for multiple indirect applications, only a single SAP-named user license is needed to cover access to all of the systems. So, there are techniques to optimize the cost associated with SAP licensing across direct and indirect usage models.
But how can an enterprise identify users who have accounts on SAP systems and non-SAP systems, or the optimal SAP license type?
SOLUTION: Enterprises can mitigate the financial risk of SAP indirect access by leveraging SAP Software Asset Management & License Optimization technology. FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications helps optimize SAP-named user licenses by detecting idle users, identifying duplicate users and assigning the optimal license type for each user based on an analysis of real usage data -- avoiding buying too many high-cost license types when lower cost licenses meet user needs. In addition, enterprises can discover instances of indirect access and optimize license requirements for non-SAP system (indirect) users.
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Flexera Software's business sits at the nexus between the world's software producers and buyers -- repairing the broken software supply chain, which is the most dysfunctional supply chain in all of business today. That dysfunction manifests as risk and cost -- to both the producers of software and the enterprises that buy software -- as they solve the complex, time consuming, and expensive problems of ensuring licensing compliance and security from vulnerabilities. Our software licensing, compliance, cybersecurity and installation solutions are essential to ensure continuous licensing compliance, optimized software investments, and to future-proof businesses against the risks and costs of constantly changing technology. A marketplace leader for more than 25 years, 80,000+ customers turn to Flexera Software as a trusted and neutral source of knowledge and expertise, and for the automation and intelligence designed into our products. For more information, please go to: www.flexerasoftware.com.
Contact Information:
For more information, contact:
Amanda Ingalls
+1.949.241.1515