Basics of SAP license management

The recipe for success in efficient SAP license management is based on a balanced and efficient mix of people, processes and tools.

There is often a lack of a governance structure to define the interfaces/communication channels between purchasing, legal, IT operations, controlling and license management.

This forms the basis for compliance as well as cost- and resource-efficient management of license audits. In addition, strategic topics such as license pooling can only be established on this basis, as the required information paths remain undefined without a corresponding governance structure.

It is important to add license types to existing role and authorization concepts in order to assign licenses according to the intended function in the event that one or more user accounts are provided for an employee. This serves to ensure basic compliance and can usually be accomplished using SAP board tools.

If you establish decommissioning mechanisms for unused user accounts and assign suitable default license types on the system side, you are well prepared for an upcoming usage measurement from a technical perspective.

Attention - not only dialog users are considered relevant for surveying, but also communication users can be considered under licensing law.

Another success factor is knowledge of existing license and maintenance agreements. In the case of usage rights, the time at which the contract was concluded is just as important as, for example, the price and conditions list on which the purchase was based.

The type of contract is also an essential source of information for determining conditions that are important under licensing law, such as defining the criteria by which a user is considered active from SAP's perspective.

Once in the comfortable situation of having the above points under control, some SAP customers deal with the guideline for system measurement and the advice that user licenses should be allocated based on actual usage.

Various software and tool manufacturers have specialized in analyzing this usage information or have added corresponding components to their existing portfolio of license management solutions.

In order to choose the right toolset, it is essential to take a close look at your own IT infrastructure, identity management processes and, in particular, contractual terms and usage rights. The reason for this lies in the way the respective tools are installed and in their range of functions.

Relevant questions include,

• what the impact is of an agent-based compared to a centralized or cloud installation.
• Which ECC versions are covered by the tool?
• Is data read or also written back to satellite systems?

All this has an effect on the licensing type and serves to clarify the question of whether a case of indirect use exists. A distinction must be made here as to whether this can be covered by platform user licenses or entails licensing of NetWeaver Foundation for Third-Party Applications.

In the latter case, if a decision has already been made in favor of a license model (which can only be selected once) (user or core), this may have a negative impact on the introduction of the preferred tool solution.

Caution is advised when a vendor/consultant advertises "automated" license management. The principle applies here that the individual contract always forms the customer-specific basis in terms of licensing law.

Proposals for the definition of license types based on module usage, CPU usage etc. are usually not approved by SAP. Furthermore, the promise usually only applies to the user area and the representation of engines, which are measured by the USMM/LAW.

Products such as Sybase, Business Objects, Ariba and non-SAP measured engines are generally not covered.