Your software license position is dictated by your contracts and your contracts will rule your relationship with your software vendor for many years. Since the indirect usage saga, SAP has the reputation of including vague policies in their contracts and making users wait for clarifications. Understanding your commercial agreements will help you use them in your favor and be prepared when SAP will show up at your doorstep for an audit.
Optimized contracts will not only come with optimized costs but will also give you the upper hand when faced with an audit or with changes in your organization. For example, having the right clause in your contract could help you deal with the excess of on premises licenses and corresponding maintenance costs by swapping those licenses with new ones. Or, you could request the termination of maintenance for only a part of your license estate, without having to trade-in or purchase additional licenses, even though SAP’s policy regarding maintenance is “all-or-nothing”.
You might want to outsource a part of your business and, since you have an excess of licenses, wrongly believe that you are allowed to give those licenses to the outsourcer to use them in your business’s interest. This is not something that SAP allows by default and should be negotiated.
The list of examples is longer, but in essence the best way to be prepared for a good relationship with SAP is to be well organized and to have a good understanding of what clauses you can include in your contracts.
To help you be prepared, whether you are just entering into an agreement with SAP or you are a long-time customer, we put together the most important clauses you should negotiate and have included in your contract.