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SAP License Fees Also Due For Indirect Users, Court Rules (networkworld.com)
SAP's licensing fees "apply even to related applications that only offer users indirect visibility of SAP data," according to a Thursday ruling by a U.K. judge. Slashdot reader ahbond quotes Network World:
The consequences could be far-reaching for businesses that have integrated their customer-facing systems with an SAP database, potentially leaving them liable for license fees for every customer that accesses their online store. "If any SAP systems are being indirectly triggered, even if incidentally, and from anywhere in the world, then there are uncategorized and unpriced costs stacking up in the background," warned Robin Fry, a director at software licensing consultancy Cerno Professional Services, who has been following the case...
What's in dispute was whether the SAP PI license fee alone is sufficient to allow Diageo's sales staff and customers to access the SAP data store via the Salesforce apps, or whether, as SAP claims, those staff and customers had to be named as users and a corresponding license fee paid. On Thursday, the judge sided with SAP on that question.
What's in dispute was whether the SAP PI license fee alone is sufficient to allow Diageo's sales staff and customers to access the SAP data store via the Salesforce apps, or whether, as SAP claims, those staff and customers had to be named as users and a corresponding license fee paid. On Thursday, the judge sided with SAP on that question.
what could possibly go wrong?
I have talked to dozens of SAP customers, and I always ask them "Are you happy that you decided to go with SAP?". So far, this is that number that have answered affirmatively: 0.
While my gut reaction is "this is outrageous!", I have been approached by several clients asking me to create systems/applications that would act solely as a proxy to allow them to skirt licensing costs. I want to believe that's what happened here but it's hard to say without actually seeing what the application did and how "indirect" it truly was. If a small piece of functionality was pulling reporting data from SAP that's one thing, if the primary purpose was to just to present data to users through a single license, that's another.
...as the headline and summary do not explain at all, but it sounds like you have to be one to want to use it...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Honestly their database and software is god awful crap. Why anyone uses it I'll never understand.
There are so many other proven alternatives that are built better and has a UI that was not built by raving lunatics...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
SAP, this is a nice way to price yourself out of existance.
Sales Force is making money using SAP data, and SAP wants a piece of that action - so they're wrangling in court over the interpretation of SAP's licensing terms.
#DeleteChrome
and there's no way SAP will allow someone to see data from their ERP system without paying for it. We've invested over $200 million in licensing fees and configuration. That isn't counting the money we've lost since it doesn't fit into our company's business model very well. After an audit in 1996 when we exposed data via a web site that I wrote in C in 1996 (which was like digging a hole to China with a spoon), we've paid user fees for customers since they have access to a small portion of their ERP data. It's great that we have a "single source of truth" with SAP and in the previous ten years before 1993 when we didn't use SAP things were just a disaster, but it's not worth the cost. Over my company's 45 year history, we've had total profits less than what we've pad to SAP which isn't including the about $75 million we spend in configuration.
According to:
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/mx/Documents/human-capital/01_ERP_Top10_Challenges.pdf
" 55% to 75% of all ERP projects fail to meet their objectives." I don't see how that number is not larger considering the difficulty in getting SAP to do even basic stuff and the cost of customization. From talking to friends that use SAP, I would guess the failure number would be well over 90%.
Based on my reading of this situation, what you're doing would be considered "indirect" as well. Just because you dump the data out, rearrange it, and present it in a different system doesn't mean the data didn't "originate" from SAP.
This is straight out of the Oracle "F*** your customers over" playbook.
All you need to fix this, is put humans between the SAP system and the rest of the backend. A few mindless data-input jobs and a license for each of them is - by definition - going to be cheaper. Call it a "human license firewall" if you want.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The company I worked at implemented SAP, and had an army of folks writing customizations to make it fit the business. I'm not sure what happened first, completion of the SAP implementation or bankruptcy. This link tells the story of Target Canada's experience: http://www.canadianbusiness.co...
In other words, so long as you throw out all their code and use them as a kind of shitty application server, they can be alright- if you get good developers to write the app for you. Sounds like you should just skip the middleman and write your own application from scratch then.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Well, once you've got it, I suspect getting away from it is HARD.
And they sell it to the C-suite, not the people who will have to run it or use it.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Which just highlights that the problem is the licensing model.
The change of terms means that it's an indication of SAP either have become "too big", they have saturated the market and can't grow anymore or they are starting to fail. In any case they may need to downsize in order to keep the customers.
Also realize that many businesses that have been successful have tailor-made systems.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Have you ever seen/used Oracle ERP? SAP is wonderful compared to Oracle.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
Well, if you are operating in twenty different countries, SAP will keep your accounting rules adapted to the intricacies of each one, yearly as rules change in every contry. And then offer you a consolidated view of all your financials.
It's in fact the only solid reason I know for going SAP, but, as the decision makers are usually financial people, it works mightily.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
In other words, so long as you throw out all their code and use them as a kind of shitty application server, they can be alright- if you get good developers to write the app for you. Sounds like you should just skip the middleman and write your own application from scratch then.
This is true of all similar systems though (Remedy, Salesforce, ServiceNow, etc..).
The execs get sold on it by sales people that show them a built out and customized suite, but all they pay for is the basic unmodified system. Then they refuse to put the budget into the management and configuration of the tool.
I've been in the business for 20 years now and I've yet to meet any user that is happy with such systems. When you dig into it the real reasons always come down to a poor deployment/implementation.
Which just highlights that the problem is the licensing model.
Yes - that is what you get when you go for commercial software.
Open source is nice. No licencing fees, manufacturers don't meddle in how you use (or resell) the sw, no licence tracking overhead. Lower TCO, and the overall quality is better too. Finally, there are fewer ads involved!
Not all commercial vendors have such painful licenses, but a lot do.
Out of curiosity, what OSS options are out there that offer the breadth of functionally that either SAP or Salesforce do? It's hard to use an OSS alternative when none exist.
All ERP systems (like SAP) are sold the same way: people in suits who don't know much about the internal workings of the actual software sit in boardrooms with executives and show them powerpoint slides of the reports that their ERP system will provide them, and none of the executives worry about the fact that (a) the software is expensive to install and even more expensive to customize - with consultants bringing in up to $200 per hour sometimes, (b) you have to adapt your business processes to the ERP system, not the other way around, unless you want to spend even more $$$, (c) any customization you do make has a good chance of being broken when you upgrade to the new version, (d) the extra data entry work that has to be done to actually get real data into the system to generate those reports probably costs more than any savings you'll realize as a result of having all that data.
I maintain an in-house ERP system written in C# running on SQL server for a small business of about 150 employees, but we're growing fast. I only spend about half my time on the development and tweaking of this system, so the only thing it costs is two VMs and half my salary. (Note that this is separate from the accounting system). There's absolutely zero licensing costs. The software is tailored to the way we do business, not the other way around. It collects data directly from the diverse manufacturing machines on the plant floor through interfaces that I can write, control, and maintain, and it does this without any manual data entry on the part of the users. Its unit test coverage is over 90%, so we can push out changes and updates without fear of breaking existing features, and I can respond to new feature requests sometimes within hours or even minutes. It tracks employee time, project management, design, purchasing, production, inventory, shipping, maintenance and costing all in a single integrated place.
Companies buy off-the-shelf ERP systems so they don't have to manage people like me, but they really end up paying through the nose for it.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Yes, but how would that scale? Mind you, this isn't an argument in favor of SAP, as I believe that you could redesign that into something that would scale, albeit it would be a bit less flexible. I'd want to use a different DB engine, possibly PostGreSQL. I don't like C#, but there's nothing really wrong with it, I just think that if you want to scale it you need to convert it from a single DB into a hierarchy, with each local entity being a complete sub-module analogous to your current system, but the overall system holding a summary of all its dependent nodes...and probably producing a different set of reports.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
that should be eliminated. Horrible software, insane prices, dreadful support.
I'm not familiar with either SAP or Salesforce feature sets but if you are seriously considering them you should look at Odoo first. You could use that, hire half a dozen full-time programmers to tweak it and still come out ahead. It is also more likely to be useful out of the box than SAP.
If that's not open-sourcey enough there is also Tryton which was forked from an early version of Odoo. Not as many features, but some technical improvements. Odoo modules should be fairly easy to port if they have the right licence.
Your system sounds cool. What happens if you get hit by a meteor on your way to work tomorrow?
That's probably why they're paying through the nose. I don't know jack shit about SAP and I work in the public sector but that part is likely the reason.
what could possibly go wrong?
I have talked to dozens of SAP customers, and I always ask them "Are you happy that you decided to go with SAP?". So far, this is that number that have answered affirmatively: 0.
As a user stuck in the middle of an SAP migration, I would agree. Our legacy system has 18 years of transaction history, and it can run database queries that would crash SAP that only has 5% of the transaction volume. SAP can't even do simple data transfers to your PC without crashing because they do everything in-memory.
After migrating less than 1/5 of our sites to SAP, we are having such awful performance issues that we are implementing SAP's only solution (called HANA), which just runs the entire system in-memory. Great solution - instead of creating a well-designed system, just charge way too much money for more RAM.
SAP is 10% product and 90% marketing.
How many developers do you have? How much time?
While of course you wouldn't need to write all of it, I still think you're underestimating the effort by a teeny weeny order of magnitude or two.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I hear this all the time, and I'm not convinced. Companies buy stuff. They either sell it, or use it to make something and then they sell that. They either make it when somebody orders it, or they make it in advance based on forecasts and keep it until somebody buys it. They send invoices to customers, they get invoices from suppliers. The invoices can go before the goods, or after...
All that's there, in the standard.
I think that 99% of the time when people say it doesn't support their business processes there's an implied "in exactly the same way we did it before, down to the tiniest detail including the colour of the post-it notes that you stick on Maisie's screen when there's a goods return."
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."