Sap licenses types

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Delivery Services. Resources Resources Customer Stories. Management Team. It involves User who performs limited operational-related roles supported by the SAP software. For example, uses the SAP software occasionally and with restricted scope. User who is authorized to access the licensed software solely for the purpose of executing transactions like Desktop procurement self-services, Travel planning and expense reporting, Talent management self-services including employee appraisals, employee development plans, employee training registration, employee opportunity inquiry and response and Read-only analytics.

So, in case you are currently in or close to a licensing audit, you might want to re-inspect your inventory to figure out unsuitable license types.

Please be mindful, that an unused license is a total waste, and unsuitable license types can unnecessarily cost you extra.

Your licensing schema should fit your needs perfectly and support your business requirements and future plans. Is there a way to work out the User Lic. Not sure if you ever got an answer for this question, but this is something that we have a tool for. The tool allows you to classify transaction codes with the license type and then uses ST03N statistics to give a proposal of the license type to allocate to the user.

If you are interesting in finding out more, please feel free to message me back. Skip to Content. Mohammad Hanfi. October 9, 1 minute read.

Companies frequently access data from an SAP system indirectly, i. As a rule, if SAP data is accessed, created, or modified from outside without an SAP user license, this is indirect use in most cases.

Even if the imported SAP data is then used exclusively in the third-party application, it is necessary to check in each individual case, how this use is agreed with SAP. In the past, there has not been a clear rule; instead, individual regulations have often been agreed upon, which have been laid down in the individual SAP contracts. Often, however, indirect use is not negotiated at all and is simply carried out. Such activities can result in serious additional payments during an SAP audit.

However, it is not at all easy to identify all third-party systems and determine whether there is indirect use of the SAP systems. The SAP tools for license measurement are not capable of such a complete analysis.

To make this situation transparent, SAP published a corresponding definition on Digital Access in Customers can follow this definition since then and thus establish SAP compliance around indirect use, or they can remain with their old contract already negotiated with SAP.

Creation of 9 pre-defined document types must licensed, if they are triggered by external non-SAP applications. With this licensing model, all further activities such as data updates, information exchange or data deletions in SAP become free of charge. SAP Digital Access is not based in the quantity of users. This means that anyone who creates such documents, whether externally or in SAP with third-party applications, does not need a license for which there is a charge.

When switching to SAP Digital Access, it is therefore possible to exchange named-user licenses for required document packages. Recently, SAP has organized an automatic counting of these documents by means of a program. SAP customers are not forced to install this Passport program. Once it is not mandatory to accept SAP Digital Access, there may be old contracts that the company wants to continue to use, in addition, the counting results from SAP release to SAP release are different and sometimes incorrect.

SAP Passport is a fairly new measurement method, introduced by SAP in and matured over several updates during Passport improves the accuracy of your digital access measurement and can exclude SAP to SAP communications from the total document counts. Once passport is installed, the system creates dedicated tables for digital access measurement, so the measurement process also works more efficiently. After 12 months, you will obtain the first relevant, passport based digital access measurement.

This note installs the digital access estimation report — estimation, not measurement. The report is inaccurate to a certain extent, as it counts all potential digital access documents, regardless of whether they were created internally in SAP, processed with internal batch processing, or originated externally by non-SAP-applications. Once the estimation report is executed, the client must lead a use case analysis to understand, which are the originators for the counted documents and exclude those cases, that do not apply for digital access licensing.

Most clients use the less expensive HANA runtime version, licensed as a percentage of the total value of licenses. HANA full use, also called HANA enterprise, offers a lot more functionality and is priced based on the used storage volume, an option that mostly is more costly.

Almost no company does not have or integrate SAP with additional standard or proprietary applications that were purchased, or self developed over the years. Even if SAP gets to be the central, strategic core application of the company, other applications may have to obtain from or provide data to SAP, and in occasions traditional file import and export processes are insufficient for large amounts of data or unattended communication processes.

When planning your SAP application architecture, such integrations need to be added to the equation, since they may require advanced functions such as data transformations, process monitoring, error tolerance, unattended processing.

When such functions add to the requirements, the probability of increased costs and interdependencies to additional modules may appear. When choosing a deployment option, you need to consider following aspects in your decision process:. The cost of this corresponds to around 22 percent of the license costs. This offer applies primarily to cloud-based SAP applications. Consumption based licensing. The contract allows you to deploy any quantity of SAP software mostly limited to selected on-premise products for a limited period.

Single metric: the client agrees with SAP on using a specific set of products and is allowed to install any needed quantity of them. The price of the licenses is based on a single metric like revenue or number of users, for example. As revenue or number of users grow, so do SAP costs proportionally. This audit right is executed by SAP in two different ways:. The auditors interview the client, execute SLAW, and discuss the licensed level and actual usage level with the client.

At the end, the auditors produce an SAP audit report that must be approved by the client with his signature. Reliable information about the SAP license portfolio in the company can then only be obtained with relevant investment of time and personnel, and all SAP agreements made with the company must be adhered to.

In small companies with a small number of SAP systems and users, the required information can still be gathered with the help of Excel tables or the company's own knowledge of the user base.

But with several hundred users, this is no longer an option. In complex SAP landscapes, there is simply no precise overview of the current license inventory.

There are different procedures depending on the SAP product purchased. For ERP applications that are installed on the customer's premises and account for the largest share of SAP applications in the company, the measurement is performed annually. It is to be performed by the customer himself, for which he must use the tools provided by SAP. It is worthwhile for companies and other organizations to introduce professional license management.

After all, every investment in SAP licenses inevitably entails maintenance fees. Unnecessary license purchases should therefore be avoided at all costs.

In addition to automated measurement, however, there are also manual analysis procedures for other products in the form of self-reporting or questionnaires. For cloud solutions, SAP performs the measurement itself. SAP also conducts formal audits if a license violation is suspected. SAP always focuses on different points. In most cases, some irregularities have been noticed or SAP recognizes that the company has no discernible transparency regarding SAP licenses. With the help of SAP license management tools, the audit preparation process can be conducted much more efficiently.

The company is licensed in such a way that SAP compliance prevails, has optimally designed license costs, thus does not pay too much, and permanently has possible requirements transparently available.

This means that SAP can be approached proactively, the best discounts can be achieved, and the clear SAP licensing situation means that SAP has no basis for discussions about the audit findings. Rights and authorizations depend on the SAP products and license types that the company uses and the time of purchase.

It is vital that an SAP user is licensed in such a way that his or her license covers his or her real activities in SAP, or even falls short of this. If they fall short, then his would then be overlicensing.

And an opportunity to optimize costs. If a company uses this system, the licenses are assigned accordingly and directly during the measurement with the USMM. For this reason, a company will probably achieve a state of permanent overlicensing, because actual usage is no longer base of the review, and excessive allowance of authorizations will inevitably lead to higher costs.

For effective license management, knowledge of the types, costs and risks is therefore just as essential as knowledge of current SAP guidelines. Since these are constantly changing, it is advantageous to always be up to date. In the past, some of the guidelines have been relaxed, giving companies more leeway to optimize their license inventory.

Unused package licenses can be credited when purchasing new products. Most companies often lack processes or ways to determine exactly how many licenses they have and how many are needed in the first place. In complex SAP landscapes, there is almost always a gap between license inventory and license requirements.

The following two manifestations occur:. Underlicensing occurs when there are more SAP users than licenses purchased, or functions are used that are not covered by the user's license.