Indirect use: data sovereignty

There are good and evil monsters. In the creepy fairy tales and ancient Greece, they have to be fed with virgins and young men. This is a cruel way of tribute. In modern times, you have to buy software licenses every year.

A benign monster is R/3 because, with proper care, sometimes very expensive, it can give its owners a lot of pleasure in return. It is voracious but predictable.

Minotaur, at the center of the labyrinth built by Daedalus, was an evil monster. NetWeaver Foundation for Third Party Applications is also an evil monster because it stayed hidden for a long time and at the beginning of last year burst out of the depths of the PKL (SAP's price and conditions list) with a tremendous roar.

Rumors about its existence have been around for many years, but no one dared to speak its true name - thus the SAP community only talked about the phenomenon of "indirect use" behind closed doors.

But because Walldorf doesn't believe in rumors, everyone tried to pretend that the threat was irrelevant. But the dear SAP customers didn't count on the host.

The "NetWeaver Foundation for Third Party Applications" monster exists and is probably one of the most insidious licensing models of all time.

The danger of NetWeaver Foundation is twofold: First, you have to understand from which direction the danger comes, where the monster is lying in wait for you. Second, you have to know what sacrifices to make to satisfy the monster.

There are two very different booty schemas: SAP's PKL reveals an engine schema and a user schema. If the existing SAP customer has opted for a license scheme to appease the monster, a later change is no longer possible - once you have opted for a diesel vehicle, your environmental conscience can torment you no matter how much, a change to gasoline is out of the question.

However, the moment of danger is much more insidious. Standardized and annual license measurement does not allow the monster "NetWeaver Foundation for Third Party Applications" to be tracked down.

The SAP existing customer is in the dark and never knows when the attack will occur. SAP has thus issued the general warning: Attention! Indirect use! In operational use with numerous modifications, Z programs and add-ons, however, this generic notice is no help.

Indirect use only describes the danger but not the solution: the monster working in secret swallows all the users' data and thus robs them of their data sovereignty.

You don't see NetWeaver Foundation, but you feel it as a demand from Walldorf for back license payments. There is no antidote, because in an SAP ERP/ECC all data ultimately ends up in the central database - the belly of the monster.

Access to this data with tools other than those certified by SAP falls under the generic warning "indirect use". The existing SAP customer is thus incapacitated and immediately loses control over its own data. The monster has struck from the darkness and won.