Magic word: Active SAP license management

The license manager is truly not made easy, and so some people look doubtfully at the results of LAW consolidation and ask themselves, "How do they come up with that?"

Because even if you rely on a software for the correct license determination, now the consolidation of the individual results in the LAW does not show the expected result.

For those who don't already despair enough about this, their SAP account can give them even more reason to ponder. Because actually, the costs for the third-party NetWeaver Foundation license would still have to be charged, and not everything is running correctly with the engine measurement either.

Please download the latest notes from the SAP Market Place, install them and then measure them again.

The license manager has little understanding for this. What comes next?

Well, SAP certainly has a lot up its sleeve. What I do know today, however, are the traps you can fall into as a license manager if you're not 100 percent attentive and always up to date on SAP licensing.

The biggest stumbling block is still the different named-user licenses. These are mainly the types:

• Professional
• Limited Professional
• Employee
• ESS
• Worker
• Logistic
• Project User.

But how do you know that employee users are really employee users and not worker users?

If you can't demonstrate an absolutely precise licensing strategy, this construct will quickly blow up in your face during the next audit.

That being said, there are new user license types coming out all the time that could potentially replace a Professional license - and at a fraction of the cost.

Ambiguities without end

But how does one know which of these license types might fit? Even more question marks surround the Third-Party NetWeaver Foundation license.

Do you really have to pay for that? And indirect use has also been an ongoing topic for some time, making the gray area perfect.

This issue seems as mysterious as the Engine survey.

The field of imponderables is large, and there are no uniform rules and assessments. Anyone who thinks evil of that is in for a surprise.

That SAP will have answers and, above all, customer-friendly solutions to all these questions ready in the near future is a nice illusion. Individual initiative is called for.

If you're already using software for license distribution, you've already taken the first right step - congratulations! If the tool then helps you detect indirect usage, supports you in engine measurement and can also take third-party licenses into account, all the better.

Then all you have to do is spend some time configuring the tool and store all the company-specific conditions from the SAP contract.

Without doing much math, you now know best yourself how much time and effort you will save in the future. We haven't talked about money yet.

This means that back payments for licenses and unnecessary additional purchases are no longer an issue. For the license manager, active license management means one thing first and foremost: security. Security about the license allocation, about the need for additional purchases, about the own use.

A good solution for all

If you understand license management as a continuous task, you have a precise overview of the current license status and current consumption at all times.

This way, you can find out at an early stage which licenses you really need and make strategic decisions to buy more. In the end, this really helps everyone.

The license manager has his costs fully under control, and the SAP account manager sometimes gets an order on the table without asking, because the customer now recognizes his purchasing needs early on himself.

Active license management may sound like more work at first. Ultimately, however, it streamlines and simplifies the process.