Stress with SAP in Berlin

This time it was the other way around: The purchasing manager and our legal counsel registered for a visit to my office. The topic was the ongoing contract negotiations with SAP regarding Hybris, Concur and Ariba as well as the upcoming topic "indirect usage".

For the time being, we have agreed to remain silent because the talks with SAP are very ambitious and dynamic. From our point of view, we have reached a critical point, so it is important to have an alternative strategy in reserve.

The colleague from central purchasing and our legal advisor thought it over and came up with a very innovative solution.

If SAP continues to show no compromise on relicensing and indirect use, we will conditionally pay the accruing maintenance fee for group use of SAP software!

This enables us to meet our payment obligations. SAP continues to deliver the contracted maintenance services - and everything "seems" to be in order.

"Subject to change" has only one minor drawback. SAP prepares its accounts in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (U.S. GAAP) state that only revenue that is free from doubt may be recognized.

If several existing customers follow our example, SAP's balance sheet will look sad. Financial analysts won't spend much time asking about the complex reasons (licensing metrics, indirect usage, etc.), but will send the stock price plummeting - then it will be over for SAP CEO Bill McDermott's 20-million-euro salary. End of story.

I don't want to claim here that everything was better in the past. But in a similar situation, ex-SAP Executive Board member and future Supervisory Board member Gerd Oswald would have already been on the SAP jet and would have flown to us together with Chief Technology Officer Bernd Leukert.

McDermott does not show his face anyway. The only option left for SAP's existing customers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland is US GAAP.

Whether our association DSAG, led by Andreas Oczko, has found an adequate solution to the licensing dilemma and whether there will soon be an answer to indirect usage and appropriate licensing metrics for IoT, I do not yet know.

I have not seen the PKL 2018/2 yet, but heard from DSAG that it looks very good and successful. This time an association seems to have done a good job.

Another report that I heard at our SAP regulars' table, on the other hand, does not bode well for SAP. The antitrust authority in Berlin has finally initiated an investigation and legal action against SAP.

I am not a lawyer to judge the implications or significance of this antitrust suit, but what I do know is that, by its very nature, it is backed by a user association in close cooperation with one of the leading law firms in Germany.

The complaint to the competition authority thus appears to be well-founded and well-considered. What will happen now? The Berlin authority will examine the application and try to interview witnesses from the SAP community as well as "aggrieved parties" - a complex process, because no existing SAP customer or partner has yet dared to come out of the woodwork.

However, it will be necessary for association members and other stakeholders to take a clear stand: for the good of the entire SAP community!