Do we need days of work every time we have to deal with this issue?

To understand which licenses and how to read the reports extracted from SAP?

Some tips in this article to make the licensing process easier in SAP.

How does SAP licensing work?

There are many SAP systems. Each of these can have different logic in licensing. In the most popular system, SAP ERP in the version ABAP on-premises, the cost of the SAP licences is calculated according to the number of users defined by system. 

There is a real price list according to the type of user, for example: 

• SAP Professional or
• SAP Limited
• SAP Developer
• or in the case of SAP S/4HANA the following:
  • S/4HANA EM Developer access
  • S/4HANA EM Professional use
  • S/4HANA EM Functional use
  • S/4HANA EM Productivity use
  • S/4HANA Tech. SAP Engine User
  • S/4HANA Technical Use
• but there are many others

Each SAP tool can have different logic from the above, for example: 

• Based on the traffic, how many gigabytes were transmitted 
• Based on the type of user 
• Based on the number of technical objects handled, i.e. how many technical locations have been defined, how many sales orders were processed, ...
• Based on the company’s turnover
• Based on the number of employees dedicated to a certain activity
• Based on the number of users defined in the system (no matter the user type)

Depending on the time of purchase of a certain product, are applied different price list and precise metrics. These may vary, within the same system, over time.

How does the SAP licensing process work?

SAP or any retailer annually require their customers to produce standard extractions from their systems by providing evidence based on the above metrics. 

For systems based on ABAP technology there are two specific transactions to carry out these operations: 

• USMM
• SLAW

The first is useful, in a single system, to see all the defined utilities and classify them according to the type (also massively)

The second is the real SAP licensing tool, which is SAP License Administration Workbench (SLAW). 

This tool, useful when you have multiple SAP systems (based on ABAP technology), it serves to carry out data consolidation.  

Yes, if a user exists in more than one system, only one license is paid. The tool shall state the consolidation criterion (usually the userid in SAP) to remove duplicates, by simplifying. 

It is thus important, if this type of consolidation is carried out in the SAP landscape, to use the same user (UserID) in the case of the same person accessing different SAP systems.

This could be useful also for the adoption of Single Sign On tools. 

Let's make an example, assuming you have two systems in your SAP landscape, SAP ERP and SAP CRM.

1. In SAP ECC system was named the person Mario Rossi with MROSSI
2. In SAP CRM system was named the same person (Mario Rossi) with ROSSIM 

In the above case two different licenses should be paid as, using UserID-based consolidation, two users will be counted. 

The optimal would have been to name both the users with MROSSI o ROSSIM. If mail was used as consolidation criterion (assuming that the same email was entered for the two users above) only one user should be paid.

Can the costs of SAP licenses be optimized?

Systems and users security (User o Identity Maintenance) comes however in aid of the SAP licensing process. By laying down rules on users' end-date (ceased users or users under fixed contract) system security is improved as well as control of software licensing costs.

What are the possible activities?

• Realize automatisms on the users in disposal (Human Resources System (HR -  Human Resource) is the ideal place to get this information):
• Ceased
• Users under fixed contract
• Users who are absent from work for long periods 
• Blocked users are counted in the license auditing, only those which have expired for more than 90 days are not counted. Always use end of validity date. 
• Assessing the reversal of licensing costs for different departments
• Knowing how much you pay is a deterrent to new licenses or additional claims, showing costs is a great way to block unnecessary requests. 
• Anticipates the annual audit license of SAP by conducting a pre-audit 
• Clearly define who in the company must take care of the management/negotiation of the licenses, not only in SAP. 
• If you are part of a group, currency and share centralized purchases. 
• Carry out access reviews (User Access Review). Re-certify the role-user link or users directly, especially in SAP, is not only useful for compliance purposes, but also to make some choices at the audit stage. 

How does SAP help you to classify and optimize users?

Through USMM tool it is possible to define criteria for optimizing SAP users on the basis of allocations and priorities.

This is a new feature called Rule Based Userid Classification. Several criteria are used to make these selections including:

• Used Transactions (Applications, see the image below)
• User attributes
• Assigned Roles

Yes, there are some limits in the tool and must be filled from scratch, system by system, by the client. But it can still be interesting. 

How can Aglea help you?

Over the years, we have received several support requests from our clients in terms of license audit.

This has allowed us to define a work model that allows to optimize the licenses management based on the actual use. 

Going to figure out which type is best to assign to each user. Of course, this is only valid for those systems where you can understand what users have done. Except for ABAP systems, the others usually have very technical metrics, for example: GB of traffic, number of processors, memory amount, etc... therefore relatively easy to understand and to extract.

We have defined a library of controls that will save time.

What are the criteria we use? For example:

• Used transactions/ applications and their frequency over time
• Assigned roles 
• User attributions (departments, functions, user groups, cost centre, etc...) 
• Most used authorization objects 

The real difficulty is understanding what type of users assign and be sure that it is the correct one (even at distance of times). 

Blog post originally translated from: https://www.aglea.com/blog/licenze-sap-come-ottimizzare-i-costi