Thanks to the DSAG, SAP has improved its licensing model Indirect Access for users. Is the model now satisfying to the community or do you still have other requests?
Andreas Oczko: Even though we reached another milestone concerning Indirect Access, there’s always more. DSAG’s first request was that SAP enables customers to switch to Digital Access with little effort while keeping their access rights. This is now possible. However, there is still the question of how costly growth and change can be for certain processes. For example, how many documents there are for an order-to-cash process. This is crucial for SAP customers to know.
Furthermore, SAP still needs to specify what Indirect Access means for customers who cannot or will not switch to Digital Access. This is an important question that we still have to work out together with SAP. As you can see, there is still a lot to do.
When talking to DSAG members or SAP customers, do you get the impression that they have understood what Indirect Access means? Or is there still need for education and training?
Andreas Oczko: There is definitely still a need for more information, even though we were able to educate our members through DSAG webinars on the topic. For example, customers need to understand that with Digital Access, the number of documents is the key for licensing measurements. Consequently, the topic of Indirect Access regarding ERP systems or S/4 Hana Enterprise Management is not relevant anymore. SAP customers would do well to accept this model and stop frantically looking for Indirect Access in every licensing fee.
With GLAC (Global License Audit and Compliance), SAP wanted to achieve a clear separation of licensing and audit and compliance teams. Did they achieve that? Did that improve the licensing situation for SAP customers?
Andreas Oczko: Based on the feedback of SAP customers, DSAG or other user group members, this separation has been achieved successfully. It seems to work for most cases and has improved the situation of SAP customers. If there is a problem (which is very rare), SAP is very interested in solving it together with its users.
In your opinion, how satisfied are DSAG members and SAP customers in general with SAP’s software and especially with the performance, quality and stability of SAP Hana?
Andreas Oczko: The quality of SAP’s product portfolio is not as high as it could be because of the lack of maturity of some solutions. Many of the acquired solutions are hardly integrated with SAP’s core. As good as these solutions may be on their own, it still remains to be seen how well they’ll fit together.
Concerning SAP Hana, the performance is generally good or even very good. It’s important for customers to build up know-how so that they can optimize their own applications for Hana and operate them seamlessly on the database.
Compared to SAP Hana 1.0, the quality and stability of SAP Hana 2.0 have unfortunately decreased significantly. SAP Hana 2.0 added new features, yes, but it also introduced new programming errors. Consequently, the maturity of SAP Hana 2.0 is lacking. SAP definitely still has to improve on that.
Add Comment