In this video we will learn about the SAP publisher pack for Software Asset Management,
and how to get visibility into compliance positions for SAP named users and engines,
as well as optimization opportunities. You may already be familiar with ServiceNow’s
Software Asset Management application, also known as SAM.
SAM systematically tracks, evaluates and manages software licenses, compliance and optimization.
Using the power of platform workflows, you can also reclaim unused software rights,
purchase new software rights, and manage allocation for entitlements.
In addition to the expansive Content Library for common metrics, ServiceNow SAM has publisher Packs
for complex publisher specific licensing. Now there’s the SAP publisher pack.
With the SAP publisher pack, you can manage and analyze user licenses specifically for SAP.
SAP offers a variety of products and different licensing constructs like
indirect access and static access. With large scale deployment,
this can be challenging to manage, and can lead to over-spending or out-of-compliance audit risks.
The SAP publisher pack helps with the Named User and engine license compliance
and optimization. It also provides Visibility into indirect access into your SAP systems.
Let’s take a look at how that works. Every user accessing an SAP application
must be licensed with a “named user” license type.
A named user refers to a type of license assigned to a user within a system—or application—based
on the function that user is performing. Examples of a named user are, developer,
professional, employee, and employee self-service.
Engines, also known as packages, are applications that are specific to business modules in your SAP
systems, like HR payroll or invoice management. Engines require licenses based on the amount of
engine usage, such as the number of employees or number of invoices created in the system.
Here’s our SAP dashboard. Once it’s installed and configured,
the SAP publisher dashboard pulls relevant information from the central SAP system.
Then it connects to other SAP systems through RFC connections via an installable ABAP program,
which is deployed on a central SAP system. The reconciliation engine then combines this
discovered data with the entitlement information to get an accurate compliance evaluation.
That evaluation identifies any true up-costs…
…or over-licensed amounts, which may help support future buying decisions,
such as placing unused licenses in a parking lot, if that’s permitted under your SAP contract.
And here we can see the data related to SAP engine usage.
As well as information about indirect access. The SAP publisher pack also calculates various
optimization scenarios for named user licenses to help you cut costs.
For example, if the same user exists in more than one SAP system, they may only need one named user
license rather than one for each system. SAP admins often create duplicate users
for the same person, which eventually consumes multiple named user licenses.
SAM identifies these situations by coalescing every user record for the same person into one,
based on a common field, like email address. SAM identifies other optimization opportunities
for SAP like users who haven’t logged in the last 90 days…
…users who are locked out of the system but are still consuming a license…
… Users without a named-user assignment… ... Non-Dialog users who have been
assigned a license. ... unused engines.
...and engine usage that’s reached 90% or more.
Now that we know what the SAP publisher pack can do for us, let’s see how to set it up.
After you’ve deployed the SAP ABAP (Essay P, A-BAP) code on your SAP
system, the next step is to establish a connection with the ServiceNow system.
First, we’ll go into the SAP connection module… …and create a new connection.
Then we’ll fill in the fields on the form. Here’s the name for our connection profile.
If you have more than one SAP system, use a name that clearly identifies the connected system.
Here, we’ll select the default price list. For the WSDL (Wizdle) field, use the URL from
your SOA manager that includes the IP address that’s used to connect the SAP system.
This URL will be generated from your web service configuration during the custom setup of the ABAP
code on the SAP system. All you need to do is copy and paste it, here.
And then the user name and password… …and submit.
Let’s take a look at a connection we created before.
We can see our connection under the SAP Connections module.
On the form, we can test our connection by clicking here.
If our test is successful,
we’ll see a list of the SAP clients that the connection was able to access.
Here’s where we’ll select the SAP User Field. This is the field that SAM will use to coalesce
users from different SAP systems into one SAP user.
We can click any SAP client to see which users have been imported from that system.
Click any SAP client to see the users for that client.
The All SAP Users module gives us a list of all SAP users on all clients.
We can see the total number of SAP users here.
This number also appears on the SAP publisher overview dashboard.
As an administrator, the next step is to create the software models.
We’ll select the publisher… …the product…
…and the named user type.
If it is for engines, we’ll select engine products.
The respective license metric will automatically be selected.
The “Is Relevant” and “Threshold” fields will be
active if they apply to the licensing terms of that particular engine.
Now that we’ve created the software model, we’ll assign a software entitlement to it.
First, we’ll need to create the software entitlements.
This lets us manage the licenses that are allocated to users in the organization.
So let’s create a new entitlement. We’ll create an entitlement for SAP…
…and then choose Named User or Engine Measurement for the License Metric field.
Here we’ll say how many purchased rights our company has for SAP.
There’s also a bulk import feature, in case we need to upload a number of entitlements.
You can also enter the unit cost, here.
And then we submit. Now that we have all this information
in our instance, the SAM reconciliation engine will run in the background as a scheduled
job to calculate true up-cost and potential savings, and find optimization opportunities,
which are published on the SAP dashboard. Or we can Run Reconciliation manually any time.
The SAP Dashboard shows all this information. It’s updated often, using a scheduled job.
Here, we can see the number of products that are out of compliance…
This takes you to the license workbench view where you can
see the reconciliation results for each product, in detail...
...like - the number of rights you own,
- how many were consumed - and how many are still available.
Going back to the dashboard - We can view the true up-cost…
Potential Savings…. Any over-licensed amount…
…inactive users, which are contractors or employees who are no longer with the company…
…system users without a named user assignment…
-Unused engines… -Engine Usage that reached 90% or more
...Locked-out SAP users who are consuming a license…
...Licensed non-dialog users, which are system users who don’t require a Named-User license…
Users for license optimization... And Potential indirect access from
transaction activity and from User activity.
Indirect access is when SAP customers allow third-party applications to
communicate with the SAP system. The third-party app only uses one
user license to integrate with SAP... ...but hundreds or thousands of users
could be getting the benefits of SAP through the third-party app.
SAP requires that those third-party apps and indirect access users be
discovered and licensed. With the SAP Publisher pack, you
can easily detect indirect access based on user and transaction activity in the SAP system.
Using the SAP publisher pack, you can manage, and analyze your valuable SAP user licenses
and take action on the potential risks in your organization.
For more information, please see our product documentation,
knowledge base, or podcast. Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.