Monitor and Manage your SAP Indirect Usage

License violations in SAP systems due to third-party applications contribute to SAP indirect access. This situation occurs when your non-SAP applications communicate with SAP. There has been a lot of news around SAP indirect access over the last few years. Perhaps, the most popular news is the London-based Diageo lawsuit, where the company was sued by SAP and the company lost the SAP indirect access lawsuit. So, it is high time to look at SAP indirect usage as a serious concern.

Here is an article on why you should be careful about SAP indirect usage and how you can effectively monitor the situation.

Why should you care about SAP indirect usage?

You do not really own the SAP software when you purchase the SAP licenses. You are only allowed to use the software in specific ways. It is important to understand how SAP defines "Software Use”, to understand what causes indirect access and how it becomes a problem.

The use of the SAP software is based on a "Named User” license system. According to SAP’s System Measurement Guide, a named user is "an employee of a customer, of its affiliated companies, or of third-party companies authorized to access the licensed software directly or indirectly, regardless of the technical interface chosen.” The user makes an indirect access when the user is not identified as a named user, and when the user loads and executes actions into the software or accesses the software.

SAP indirect usage could incur huge costs

SAP customers are liable to purchase additional SAP licenses or pay fines for using the SAP software without having acquired the appropriate licenses beforehand. In general, SAP indirect access happens when an SAP customer fails to purchase licenses for SAP users accessing the SAP system indirectly via a third-party software/tool or custom interface.

The focus of SAP SE is finding the third-party interfaces during a software license audit. The software license audits may end up in very expensive deals for the customer or multi-million-dollar lawsuits if SAP SE finds the interfaces. Consequently, the SAP customer gets little to no value for the additional licenses.

SAP SE takes up indirect usage very seriously

SAP SE is making the annual system measurement process – or software license audit process – more automated. This includes developing functionalities to measure SAP indirect access, so the audit process becomes more transparent to the SAP customers.

All third-party interfaces require additional licensing if they create an SAP document from the 9 document types in SAP, according to the new SAP indirect access model, dubbed"Digital Access”. Each document is counted based on its original creation and there is no extra license to read, change, or delete the document.

SAP indirect access is a complex part of SAP license management. Besides, there are only a few procedures available to detect SAP indirect access. USMM and SAP LAW cannot detect SAP indirect access. Yet, indirect access could show up in the reports recognized by SAP’s audit department.

Solution to your SAP indirect access risks

AuditBOT’s SAP License Saver is the only proven solution that offers 100% automated SAP license management of entire SAP Landscape with guaranteed SAP license cost savings up to 40%.

Choose AuditBOT and there would be no longer a need to worry about surprise costs during an SAP audit. SAP License Saver helps to identify and track SAP indirect usage by defining third party applications, including related user accounts. Besides, the solution identifies and determines which data was accessed, how the data was accessed and check if the data access qualifies as indirect usage.

AuditBOT’s SAP License Saver assists in reviewing third-party system user lists and cross-checking them with the active SAP named user pool. SAP License Saver helps customers to fully analyze their interfaces and SAP indirect access, before getting audited. SAP customers gain transparent insights on their SAP architecture and understand their SAP indirect access risks. The SAP customers can make an informed decision—before an SAP license audit forces them to think about the risks.