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What is Digital Access?
A lot of you have been wondering what the SAP’s new ‘Digital Access’ license model is all about. Some of you might be aware of the older and less defined ‘Indirect Access’ licensing construct that ended up costing some companies millions of dollars due to inaccurate license usage reporting from 3rd party systems like Salesforce. Last year, SAP introduced a new ‘Digital Access’ license model to improve the definition of costs arising out of digital/indirect access. We are happy to announce support for this new ‘Digital Access’ license model as part of the 2020 R1 release for FlexNet Manager Suite.
In a nutshell, the new license model metrics are based on nine document types generated from the Digital Core that represent commonly valued business outcomes. In an SAP ecosystem, there will be a cost associated with the initial creation of these types of documents in SAP systems by third-party interfaces. There are no additional costs for reads, updates, deletes or the additional documents automatically generated in the system when the first document is created.
Check out the whitepaper and webinar here if you want to learn more about ‘Indirect or Digital Access’ and the changes introduced by SAP to try and better address the costs of accessing the Digital Core from 3rd party system interfaces or non-SAP systems.
How does Digital/Indirect Access work in FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications?
FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications already monitors your systems by discovering indirect access by third-party interfaces and non-SAP systems using metrics like RFC calls, functions used and number of non-dialog users. As part of 2020 R1 release, we have added the ability to measure your to measure the cost of indirect/digital access based on the new document license metrics announced by SAP and decide if you want to adopt the new license model.
Collecting Digital Access Data
You can now import digital access data from SAP ECC as well as S/4HANA systems using multiple methods depending on whether you use dependent or independent system configurations. You can use the beacon to specify the collection period if you mostly use independent systems as shown below.
Confirm Data Collection and Manage Price Table
Once your digital access data is collected, you will be able to confirm the details by checking in the ‘Indirect Access’ section of the product in a new ‘Documents’ tab. FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications. On the same page, you will also have the ability to manage the price table based on your contract with SAP or sample/indicative pricing as shown below.
Calculate Digital Access Costs
Once you have ensured that the data is collected and you have set the price table, you just need to run your license position calculation. This takes the metrics gathered from your SAP systems and pricing you have defined to get an idea of the digital access costs you have incurred for the period.
What can I do with Digital Access cost information?
With this capability, you will be able to get an idea of your current costs around digital/indirect access and make an informed decision to choose between the options offered by SAP to migrate to the new model.
