Whether you are already a SAP customer or you intend to become one in the near future, there are some things that you should take into consideration before purchasing SAP licenses. SAP provides clients with a wide range of products and licenses and, for this reason, it has created different types of licenses, according to the various needs of the customers. It is a well-known fact that SAP aims at selling software in order to facilitate the process of running a company and making it more effective by avoiding possible risky situations. After buying SAP software, the first thing to do is to license it. The benefits of SAP licensing consist of receiving a name user and package licenses, which are key elements for the correct performance of all the applications that are part of the software.

 

On the one hand, package licenses are used for the deployment of a specific set of SAP software which is meant to help you sustain your company’s activities and to comply with all the requirements deriving from your business. SAP employees are continuously working with customers to see what their real requirements are and how they can improve their software to satisfy the clients’ needs. A SAP license is created in accordance with these aspects and can be changed if the company has success and starts to expand by hiring new people and by enlarging the field of activity.

 

On the other hand, there are also the named user licenses whose objective is to enable users to get access to the licensed software. Named user licenses are priced by the number of users, while package licenses are priced by the number of business metrics (the performance of the licensed software package which may include the number of orders, the number of contracts, the number of bonuses etc.). SAP licensing stipulates that package licenses and named user licenses cannot work independently of each other.

 

A SAP license can be either perpetual or subscription based. Among all the licenses offered by SAP, the greatest proportion is occupied by perpetual licenses. A perpetual license allows customers to make use of a certain product for an unlimited period of time. Customers have to pay for it when they license the software. Perpetual licenses are made up of two key parts: package licenses and named user licenses which were previously presented in the article under discussion. Subscription based licenses presents some peculiarities that make them different from perpetual ones. They allow access to specific SAP software from a remote location and all the applications and services are supervised by SAP itself or by a SAP partner. Subscription based licenses are active for a certain period of time established from the beginning and can be renewed regularly.

 

In case you have purchased a SAP application, you need to first license it. Anyone who wants to do SAP licensing has to take into consideration some market categories: applications, analytics, mobile, cloud, database and technology. These market categories are very helpful in deciding which packages to choose to satisfy your business requirements. Customers can purchase license packages from the same market category or from multiple market categories. Licensing requirements depend very much on the market and each market implies some peculiarities. For example, SAP Business Suite can be activated through several packages: “Enterprise Foundation” package, “Enterprise Extension” package, Industry portfolio packages and Line-of-business portfolio packages. Similarly, this can be done with all other applications, such as cloud solutions, mobile solutions, database and technology.

 

To conclude, SAP licensing has multiple advantages for customers: considerable discounts for future SAP purchases, identification of duplicate accounts, identification of modifications in licensing inventory, inspection of data etc.

 

Have you ever purchased a SAP license? What do you think about SAP licensing?