Starting with Bill McDermott’s keynote at SAPPHIRE in May this year there have been a number of announcements made by SAP around indirect usage.  These changes are a direct result of SAUG’s participation in the international SAP User Group Executive Network (SUGEN).

The changes to licensing for indirect usage announced at SAPPHIRE are explained in the white paper that was written by SAP and distributed to SAUG members on 13 July 2017. After the publication of the white paper, our members had further questions about specific cases or interpretation of a particular (indirect) use of SAP. This situation was not unique to Australia and we asked SAP to consider allowing customers to get a response to their queries on indirect usage.

In response SAP has announced the SAP Licensing Transparency Centre initiative.  Your SAP account executive is still the first designated contact for licensing questions. However, we appreciate that you may have questions that you do not want to discuss with your account executive. Therefore, SAP has set up the SAP Licensing Transparency Centre. There are two ways to use this:

The first way is on an anonymous basis. If you have general questions about the indirect use of SAP and the white paper does not provide enough insight, you can contact the SAP Licensing Transparency Centre via SAUG. You can do that without giving your customer name. You should keep in mind that the answer will be more general than if you ask a question providing your company name.

The second way is to mention your company name and provide some additional information. If you have any doubts about whether the new way of licensing for SAP indirect use is applied in your case, then the SAP Licensing Transparency Centre is the place you can submit a question.  The answer will be more specific and, if necessary, will be tailored to your account.

In both cases, contact Mark Baker, CEO of SAUG if you have a question for the SAP Licensing Transparency Centre.  All questions to the SAP Licensing Transparency Centre must come via SAUG.

At the recent SAUG Executive Council (SEC) meeting members posed questions to SAP ANZ senior executives on the indirect usage topic.  The new SAP ANZ management team have made a commitment to treat the indirect usage issues of customers more empathetically.  In response, Pete Andrew, COO SAP ANZ, wrote an open letter offering direct line contact to him or Mark Hettler, in addition to the SAP Licensing Transparency Centre.  The offer was made to all members, not just SEC members.

As part of SUGEN, SAUG will continue talks with SAP on the indirect use of SAP. There are currently several questions that need to be addressed.

– What are other indirect use scenarios besides Order-to-Cash, Purchase-to-Pay and Static Read?

– What is the background of the recent major price increase for sales and service orders?

– How does a mixed licensing model work with users and business metrics in practice?

– How is SAP dealing with indirect use of the past?