SAP UK has recently won a court case against Diageo in a test case to determine their rights in claiming license fees for users with indirect access to SAP data. The implications for many SAP users can be profound.
Essentially this issue is where third party users are accessing data generated by an SAP system even though they themselves have not been directly licensed to use the SAP system and may be accessing the data through a third party system. In the case of Diageo data generated by a SAP system was fed through a Salesforce system to allow self-service access rather than directly into an SAP system.
In order for the court to rule in favour of SAP it had to be proved that the terms and conditions included wording that was sufficiently clear in explaining that SAP was allowed to make an additional charge where the SAP data was indirectly accessed.
The implications of the outcome of this court case can be far reaching and as yet have not been fully explored. One thing that users of SAP and other software can be sure of is that the implications of SaaS vs on premise software licensing will continue to cause issues due to increased complexity.
For full details of the Royal Court of Justice ruling 16th February 2017 Between SAP UK Ltd and Diageo Great Britain Limited, click here.
SAP licensing is an increasingly complex topic in which SAP does not support its clients. Instead of helping them, customers are confused by questionable additional demands and inadequate audit tools. The consequence are unnecessary license purchases in the order of millions – not least due to fear of underlicensing. Manual “system adjustments” prior to a SAP system measurement or tracking use via Excel do not solve these challenges. SAP customers who become aware of these challenges seek the assistance of external SAP license experts who not only have the corresponding experience at their disposal but also the tools to regain transparency within the SAP license jungle. Only those who have a constant overview of their SAP system usage know what they need to purchase and when, and which user licenses to shut down.
Try our SmartTrack License Control for SAP for free to assess you SAP licensing position here.
