SAP's license measurement

Couldn't the existing SAP customer also say: What do I care? SAP will come to measure the license and then we'll know what's going on - right?

Florian Ascherl, KPMG: Of course, existing SAP customers can wait until the annual SAP survey is due. However, this primarily represents a self-disclosure about software usage.

SAP undoubtedly offers extremely helpful tools for gaining transparency about one's own usage - provided the appropriate knowledge is available. But launching the USMM or LAW/LAW2 once a year is not, in my opinion, in the spirit of sustainable license management.

Rather, these functionalities, or at least the underlying usage information, should form a basic component of the necessary transparency, compliance and optimization checks of the license management organization, taking into account the knowledge of one's own usage rights.

The following still applies: The customer is responsible for compliance with the license terms.

So waiting is counterproductive?

Ascherl: Should customers wait and settle for the survey results, important insights cannot be gained and interpreted from a license management perspective. Both overlicensing and underlicensing are usually the logical consequence - both are avoidable.

Whether for IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP or any other vendor, impending loss provisions and unplanned spending on software due to lack of visibility and governance processes is an unattractive and, given today's capabilities, an unnecessary consequence in any case.

It is therefore always advisable to keep track of acquired usage rights, changes in these in the case of deferred license purchases, and usage quantities.

What are the pitfalls for existing SAP customers in the LAW, License Administration Workbench?

Ascherl: Based on our experience, we have learned that many SAP customers struggle with the results of the measurement. In many cases, customers do not find themselves in the numbers and do not understand how to read the documented usage, on the basis of which SAP creates an invoice or the statement of potential mislicensing or underlicensing.

Who needs to take action here?

Ascherl: In fact, I do not attribute the responsibility here to SAP, which is one of the few known licensors to proactively provide surveying tools. If customers are not able to collect this or similar information even during the year for planning, reporting and budgeting purposes, this is not SAP's responsibility.

If one is prepared to invest in the necessary knowledge and resources, it is, in my view today, a solvable task to create sustainable transparency, which should also be present in the sense of a good B2B or B2C connection between SAP and its customers.

Who is and could be responsible for USMM and LAW?

Ascherl: Every person responsible for system measurement should know about the special features and the mode of operation of the USMM and LAW/LAW2. After all, SAP provides sufficient documentation on this.

These tools are not opaque, they do their job exactly as described in the corresponding documentation. The most common sources of error for incorrect measurement - from the customer's point of view - are usually to be found in the lack of processes regarding license assignment, correct decommissioning of accounts, unique identifiers for determining overlapping user groups, and so on. In the Engine area, the source of the error is often unrecorded or incorrectly recorded correction notes, which SAP also proactively provides.

So are there any dangers?

Ascherl: In the worst case, there is a risk that the same engine will be measured, but based on an incorrect price list. This could result in the existing licenses not being able to be used to cover usage if necessary. In either case, this leads to unnecessary potential for discussion. Rest assured, I am not speaking on behalf of SAP here, but can you spontaneously name me - apart from SAP and some IBM products - a licensor who, on his own initiative, offers you a measurement and verification option for your deployed licenses?

There are numerous license measurement tools on the market and often their results differ from the SAP license measurement results. Why?

Ascherl: The aim of the annual SAP survey is to determine usage in SAP systems. The example of SAP users is a good way to explain this: The SAP measurement tools, USMM and LAW, access user information from the systems and consolidate it based on a defined and unique identifier that can be selected by the customer. First, each user is measured who is created as active in the system from a licensing perspective.

That sounds very pragmatic - doesn't it?

Ascherl: For the USMM and LAW, it does not matter whether user accounts are actually used and since when they are considered active in the system. The assignment of suitable license types and the correct cleanup of unused accounts are the responsibility of the customer and should be carried out accordingly within the framework of interfaces to HR processes and events such as entry, exit, long-term illness or parental leave. It is also the responsibility of each customer to select the appropriate license type based on the role assigned to an employee and to check this license type later for plausibility and license compliance in the context of actual use. In addition to expert knowledge and standard SAP information, optimization tools are increasingly being used for this check.

What do you understand by this?

Ascherl: It should be noted that - and I mean this in an absolutely non-judgmental way - a tool, no matter how good it may be technically and no matter by which expert it was set up, always reflects only the opinion of the consultant or customer. For a 100 percent accurate picture, the information available in the license descriptions is not sufficient to reflect with exact probability the interpretation by SAP. At best, this interpretation can be approximated, and the degree of this approximation ultimately defines the professionalism and competence of the license expert. In addition, many tools are not capable of managing the chaos within complex customer environments.

An example?

Ascherl: Typical examples are that no account is taken of the fact that, in the case of the setting of several price lists in these tools, any required usage rights of a license type are considered as if they were contained in another license type that is "higher-value" according to the tool logic. However, this is far from being the case, and so the results between the tool and the SAP measurement often drift apart. The most recent example I was confronted with was a tool that classified all types of Professional Users as a single "Professional User". Even CRM and ERP Professional Users were all classified into this one category, which, according to the customer construct, resulted in a significantly lower license requirement compared to SAP measurement. Based on my experience, I can only recommend that the cause of any discrepancies should first be found in the way the tools work, rather than in SAP's measurement. I recommend that you generally refrain from using preconfigured license allocation mechanisms and (re)allocation methods that are offered by manufacturers in a dubious manner. No matter how well they may be worked out in their standard, they usually do not fit the established contract and license models of every end customer.

Thank you for the interview.