Survey reveals SAP users’ licensing concerns

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, here at the User Group we recently surveyed our membership regarding their thoughts on SAP licensing.  I can now reveal some of the top-level findings from the study:

95% of SAP users believe that the company’s software licensing policy is overly complicated

• 89% of users stated that they would like SAP to reduce complexity by offering software that is only limited by one license or usage metric
• 67% stated that as SAP’s product catalogue has continued to expand they have found it increasingly difficult to track license usage
• 97% stated they should have the ability to ‘park’ unused licenses for support periods
• 97% didn’t believe that SAP has effectively explained the migration path of moving from on-premise to its mobile or cloud offerings and how this impacts on their existing licensing agreements

In many respects the results aren’t a surprise, as in the current business climate many organisations are looking to ensure they are getting maximum value from their software licenses.  At the same time the changing IT landscape is also having an impact on the complexity of software licensing.  This is an issue currently facing a lot of software vendors and their customers, as many license terms were agreed at a time when workforces were larger and the vast majority of deployments were on premise.

SAP users are no different and these findings illustrate that they would like to see license costs and conditions that are transparent and flexible.  Encouragingly SAP has acknowledged these concerns and is starting to work with SUGEN to engage on a topic that is clearly challenging for both parties.

We will be looking to work closely with SAP in the UK, to ensure users are provided with greater clarity when it comes to licensing.  To find out more about the licensing workshop we are running at this year’s User Group Conference click here.