Use the indirect use

Part 1

Stefan Autengruber

At the beginning of the year, Peter Färbinger presented me with a treasure from the E-3 archive: the SAP price lists from seven years ago, with the first copy from 2005. If existing customers remembered these facts, they could solve many licensing problems with legal know-how and technical knowledge.

Indirect use would no longer be a "ghost". Whether the SAP installation requires a Sales and Service or Engines license could be inferred by the existing customer from the contents of his contract. This makes it clear what and to what extent SAP is allowed to audit.

The facts and circumstances of the beverage manufacturer Diageo from the UK are transformed and analyzed here as an example for Germany. Based on these findings, SAP customers who licensed the Business Suite for the first time in 2005 and use Salesforce as third-party software can find their way around.

Diageo licensed the Business Suite in 2005. There were numerous contract amendments until 2012. As everywhere, the contract templates based on German law were changed to templates used by SAP in the USA in 2008 to 2010.

This is the beginning of the break in style in SAP's legal handwriting: The templates are becoming a confusing and casuistic system. But what is legal is not determined by SAP, but results mostly from the initial contract and its contractual components.

The initial contract defines the license model and the conditions for using the interfaces. Further purchases do not change this. If someone buys something wrong (e.g. an application model engine in the business suite environment), this must be corrected, but does not change the legal assessment of the interface.

Diageo licensed the Business Suite and additionally XI in the NetWeaver Full Usage license. A comprehensive and wise licensing! A model that SAP had intended to enable the use of third-party systems and to map interfaces correctly in a nutshell.

When an interface is licensed, this breaks the chain of license obligation. All users behind it are free. Any existing customer from back then should have licensed NetWeaver Full Use and the XI Engine and would have acquired a free pass for indirect use.

If Diageo had been licensed in Germany and the system had been set up correctly, SAP would have lost the case.

Part 2

Peter M. Färbinger

You can be happy with SAP software - but you don't have to be! The issue of licensing in particular has made life difficult for many existing SAP customers in recent years.

Official license surveys became more and more SAP's way of raising money. For real performance, no existing customer wants to deprive SAP of anything: Clear bill, good friendship!

But the topic of "indirect use" smacks of not licensing performance, but raising money for the Walldorf coffers. At E-3 Magazine, hardly a day goes by that we don't discuss the topic with SAP partners, existing customers and our readers.

One reason for this unpleasant situation is SAP's history, PKL and contract design. For many years, the DSAG user association has been calling for a consolidation of the SAP price list (PKL).

Little has happened. Or, as licensing expert Stefan Autengruber observes: It's getting even more complex. SAP is treating its existing customers more and more carelessly. We hear in the E-3 editorial office that in the past, the SAP sales representative was a friend and advisor to the existing customer, who knew the history and with whom solutions were discussed together.

Today, the sales representative comes with the results of the license measurement and presents a license back payment.

SAP NetWeaver is a great product. This was already recognized by former member of the Executive Board Shai Agassi, who was a strong promoter at the relevant events in Frankfurt/Main.

I suspect that he has built in many license traps here according to "bazaar mentality" in order to be able to re-license vigorously. There is the runtime licensing and the full-use licensing.

Runtime is defined as "what is subsumed under the intended business transaction use". Full use is everything else and especially the connection of non-SAP systems. This existed and still exists today in a slightly different form.

And at that time it seemed clear and obvious: If an interface is licensed, this breaks the chain of license obligation. All users behind it are free.

Existing customers who licensed Business Suite, XI and NetWeaver Full Use in 2005 can only be advised: Take advantage of the indirect use! Because this is free of charge for you, if one has set up the system correctly and understands the price lists.