Creating good ground for the architecture of the future

SAP Leonardo Powers Enterprises with Intelligent Technologies - that's a headline on an SAP marketing slide at this year's Sapphire in Orlando. Hasso Plattner spoke - once again - about how everything will soon be faster. By that he means the development and introduction of new processes.

Even if SAP customers believe only half of such marketing statements, many are thinking about implementing the new SAP technology in the next few years.

Because even if you don't believe in SAP's promises, for example of an average 35 percent increase in revenue as promised in said marketing slide, SAP customers have no choice.

S/4 Hana will come. Sooner or later. This means that all SAP customers are facing S/4 migration projects and contract conversions. In doing so, one should always start with an inventory.

This includes a contract analysis and a usage analysis, which show which SAP and non-SAP products are in the inventory and which of them are used and how.

Don't fit: SAP landscapes and license management

Transparency (What is running on the servers? Which systems are interconnected?) of an SAP landscape is essential for comprehensive license management and technical usage analysis.

In the past, SAP landscapes have grown very strongly over years and decades due to the multitude of SAP products. In most cases, this growth, the lack of planning, and the complexity of the landscapes were not accompanied by appropriate measures in the context of documentation.

This is partly due to the speed at which these landscapes have grown, and partly due to the lack of tools to document such landscapes.

SAP does not provide its customers with the appropriate tools for planning IT landscapes. As a result, the transparency of SAP landscapes does not meet the requirements of license management.

Be able to assess indirect use

EAM is the corresponding discipline for maintaining IT and SAP landscapes. Furthermore, there are tools that are able to read SAP landscapes and visualize a variety of attributes.

These attributes include system IDs, clients, company codes, but also technical information such as interfaces (inbound/outbound) to SAP and non-SAP applications.

This information is also the basis for assessing "indirect usage" in SAP landscapes. Such tools are not only intended for one-time recording, but also for regular analysis of SAP landscapes.

By using an EAM in conjunction with an analysis tool, SAP users have a very good basis for operating optimal SAP license management and simultaneously using the information for further analysis.

Create transparency for migration and transformation

For the upcoming migration projects and contract conversions, you need both, an EAM system and a license management solution. For conversion projects of this size, the legal perspective should always be taken into account in addition to the technical, commercial and contractual ones.

At E-3 Magazine's "SAP Licensing Expertise" workshop on September 18, 2018, in Heidelberg, Germany, SAP customers and experts will discuss the new pricing model and challenges from all four perspectives, among other topics.