Better together

SAP still insists on its unproven position, which violates all known legal opinions. Patrick Quellmalz, Head of Service at Voice e.V. and Managing Director of Voice CIO-Service GmbH, commented in a press release on October 2:

"We see indirect use as a threat to digital transformation. For two reasons: Users expose themselves to licensing risks if they use forward-looking technologies, such as APIs, containers, or just a modern e-commerce solution that also uses SAP data.

In addition, SAP's licensing behavior is causing massive damage to the market for third-party applications. SAP is now putting a stop to the business model of third-party providers. In our view, this is anti-innovation and anti-competitive."

You can read an in-depth interview with Patrick Quellmalz in the current E-3 issue October 2018 on page 20. And in the same issue on page 14, Florian Ascherl, Director Risk Advisory at Deloitte, explains SAP's Global License Audit and Compliance (GLAC) and how license compliance can work in the future.

Guido Schneider from Aspera has completed his survey on SAP licensing policy and "indirect usage". He will present the results at the DSAG Congress in Leipzig and publish the key findings in E-3 November 2018.

This much can already be revealed: About half of the respondents fear that "indirect" use will be more expensive for their company under the new pricing model than under the old, named-user-based model.

About one-third of study participants don't know, and only eight percent hope it won't be more expensive (n=49).

In summary: 2019 will bring a lot of uncertainty and high costs for existing customers in terms of licensing! Together, we should start talking to SAP now: DSAG, IA4SP and Voice are called upon on behalf of existing customers!