SAP Licensing and E2E—Don’t Administrate, Orchestrate!

Part 1 - Stefan Autengruber

Let’s take a look into the future. How does the developer user evolve in S/4 Hana? What is striking is that there is no longer a user, but the term “Developer Access” – i.e. access to development activities.

Anyone who knows SAP, knows that “grey areas” are first written down in the price lists and are only executed later: Developer Access as an “additional license component for software development” does not cover all development activities: There is now a development cloud and whoever wants to develop in it needs a web IDE license (Integrated Development Environment).

Currently, SAP only charges for the IDE license, but from a legal point of view, it is also entitled to charge for Developer Access. SAP will not execute this yet, but perhaps in a few years, at its own discretion.

SAP’s creativity has always been excellent when it comes to interpreting licensing rights. Once there were NetWeaver Developers for NetWeaver, there were Mobile Developers for Mobile and at some point there was a rule that you needed at least one “Developer” per contract, and at soome point that was necessary per installation. These are regulations that only the true licensing expert knows about and can give legal advice on.

In addition, legal analyses based on copyright law alone are hardly useful. The legal situation usually is secure and pretty clear: It depends solely on the price list and general terms and conditions know-how from the past 18 years.

Back to the future: besides Web IDE access, development in Native Hana is strictly prohibited. Development activities may only take place outside of the interfaces. It is clear to everyone that this does not work and SAP does not want to hear it and sometimes tolerates it tacitly. However, tolerance alone does not constitute a right to do so in the future!

If you have known SAP pricing for as long as I have known it, then you should prepare yourself for the fact that SAP will provide a new user type for “Native Hana Development”, which is probably priced higher than previous developers.

Therefore, my advice: insist on the fact that for Hana DB and S/4 Hana contracts, Developer Access is granted free of charge to current developer users. Your SAP salesperson may not want to hear it, but the legal and contracting team in the backoffice knows that it is and must be like that.

Part 2 - Peter M. Färbinger

The latest SAP press release on the new conditions for PKL and indirect use also contains the following section of text as an "offer" and "compensation" to existing SAP customers:

[...] SAP is also introducing new organizational and governance rules that provide for a strict separation between the sales organization and processes and the audit organization and its processes.

To this day, disagreements continue to arise between customers and SAP over how older contracts should be interpreted with regard to the new digital requirements.

[...] The organizational changes on the SAP side now allow these issues to be separated and enable independent discussions. This makes it easier for customers and SAP sales staff to work together.

(End of quote from the SAP press release by Global Communications on April 10, 2018)

The conflict between SAP Sales, which has to meet a quota, and SAP's Legal and Contracting team, which also wants to ensure legal certainty, can be read very clearly between the lines.

Whether the administrative and organizational separation is really to the advantage of existing customers remains to be seen. Ultimately, the aim is to have a consolidated license system with SAP and not with different departments.

Whoever thinks this SAP diversification is evil is a rogue. But it is once again the many goals that the ambitious SAP CEO Bill McDermott wants to achieve all at the same time:

On-premise and cloud computing; maximum license costs for indirect use and digital transformation with IoT sensors that are to transfer their data directly to ERP; all existing SAP customers must move to the new Hana platform and pay for new developer licenses.

The list of Bill McDermott's claims and contradictions could go on and on. The fact remains: If SAP has not consolidated its price and conditions list (PKL) for the digital transformation by 2020, then nothing will come of the S/4 release change by 2030.

And in Walldorf, the horror scenario is already being discussed behind closed doors:

What if existing customers implement IoT, blockchain, machine learning, mobile computing, etc. with other IT partners and reduce SAP to its old ERP role - without any developers or indirect use?