In late 1973 I found myself in unfamiliar territory—pounding the pavement and attempting to utter intelligible German as a fledgling, 19-year-old church service volunteer in Wuppertal, east of Düsseldorf.

But I realize now I wasn’t alone back then trying to find my feet in a new venture.

Approximately 300 kilometers to the southeast in the town of Weinheim near Mannheim was a fledgling enterprise called SAP Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung (System Analysis and Program Development). Founded the year prior by five former IBM employees, SAP had developed and was selling its first financial accounting system.

Two years later, at the end of my service, SAP and its 25 employees were on a roll, generating three million Deutschmarks (DM) in revenue.

Fast-forward to today. SAP is the world’s largest provider of enterprise application software. Its 85,751 employees serve 350,000 customers in more than 180 countries. Total revenue in 2016 exceeded €22 billion.

Simplifying Complex SAP Licensing

Software represents one of the greatest opportunities for performance gains and competitive differentiation. It’s also one of the greatest sources of risk.

According to IDC, in 2016 software license complexity cost organizations indirectly an average of 25% of their software license budget. And Computer Weekly reports that 66% of IT managers admit to not having a completely accurate record of their IT assets.

As a software behemoth, SAP develops packaged solutions for 25 industries and 12 lines of business—on-premise, cloud, and hybrid. Yet it’s safe to say that for many SAP customers, SAP software licensing can be notoriously complex. For example, organizations find it difficult to track their Named User license allocation, due to the lack of definition of user types. Add to this such hot topics as indirect access, and you’re not alone in thinking that SAP is simply too difficult to manage properly.

What’s more, those responsible for managing software assets must accommodate multiple licensing and pricing models in an ever-more diverse IT landscape replete with hosted, cloud, and virtualized options and an increasing number of user-owned devices.

Manage SAP Like Any Other Vendor

However, with the right IT Asset Management (ITAM) solutions and expertise, SAP licenses can be managed like any other vendor. That’s where License Optimizer for Clients and License Optimizer for Servers from Ivanti come in.

Ivanti IT asset management solutions onboards raw LAW data and allocates the relevant license type to each user based on their use. What’s more, it automatically suggests recommendations for user cleansing/consolidation based on all user data available, including non-essential fields. The result is efficient and accurate compliance reporting for all Named Users, Engines, and Hardware (CPU).

In addition, Ivanti’s team of analysts works with customers to highlight the key indicators of indirect access—such as workload volumes and 24-hour usage—and recommend optimization actions.

Leverage Advanced Licensing Algorithms

Ivanti keeps you ahead of the curve, supporting the most advanced licensing regimes in the software market—from metric tracking to analysis and modelling. Complex regimes are most prevalent in the data center where clustering and virtualization are widely deployed. Ivanti offers plain-language explanations, and even tracks cloud-based software, providing evidence of performance issues or discovering unauthorized usage (Shadow IT).

It’s time to take a closer look at Ivanti. You can transform the way you manage complicated licensing models and start optimizing your software investments across all vendors and platforms.

  • Increase coverage and benefit with metrics for all major licensing types, with over 85 specialized vendor metrics, including SAP, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, and Symantec
  • Ensure compliance across your desktop, data center, and cloud environments, even with the most complex of vendors
  • Accelerate results via our extensive software recognition library that rationalizes multiple inventory sources; understand software deployment and usage across your entire estate
  • Manage the impact of current licensing trends such as VDA and License Mobility on your software investments
  • Identify, harvest, and re-distribute unused licenses in your business to drive down costs
  • Establish a central point for contracts and agreements, manage them proactively by empowering specified managers, and support them with tailored reporting and alerts

Get a free demo, or request a quote!