HANA Platform Use Rights - Import Non-SAP data to HANA DB standalone and HANA DB of an S/4 system

[FabioPagoti]

Hello SAP folks who understand about licensing.

This is not a technical question about how to import or export data from or to SAP systems. It's only about software licensing and use rights.

Short question:

- Is a customer allowed to import non-SAP data into HANA DB to consolidate data for data analytics reasons? If yes, under which circumstances? Is this applicable to S/4HANA? If not, what would be the official recommendations?

Long question

Let's assume company ABC wants to take advantage of the HANA platform capabilities to use it as a central system to perform data analytics of SAP and non-SAP data.

Customer ABC currently uses ECC, CRM and maybe some SAP Cloud solutions as Ariba and some non-SAP systems for different departments and scenarios. Customer ABC decides to import data from all those SAP and non-SAP systems to a "standalone" HANA Platform. The objective is to generate reports in any BI Client like PowerBI or SAC consuming consolidated data from this standalone HANA DB. For example, by using calculation views.

Question 1) Is customer ABC allowed to do that? If yes, which license/contract for this standalone system allows this read-only scenario?

Now let's assume customer ABC already has the license/contract (which I don't know the name and conditions) which allows it to import data from different SAP and non-SAP systems to a standalone db. Customer ABC is planning to migrate to S/4HANA in the future. As the S/4HANA implementation will consolidate some of the existing SAP systems to a single one, customer ABC wants to know if it's allowed to import all data from non-SAP systems into the same HANA database instance used by S/4HANA. Then, a standalone HANA database would not be needed and not only calculation views could be used but also (maybe) S/4HANA specific features like embedded analytics and ABAP RESTfull, etc.

Question 2) Is customer ABC allowed to do that into the same HANA db instance used by S/4? If yes, which license/contract would be needed for that?

Now let's assume the licenses/contracts referred above (which I don't know the name and conditions) do not exist or are not eligible for customer ABC.

I assume one option would be HANA Cloud on BTP.

Question 3) Is customer ABC allowed to do that into HANA Cloud? If yes, which license/contract of the SAP on-premise systems would be needed for that? Is there any other SAP solution targeting this scenario?

What options are left on the table?

Question 4) What if customer ABC does not want to use HANA Cloud but any other non SAP solution? Which license/contract of the SAP on-premise systems would be needed for that? Please notice this would require exporting SAP data to non-SAP systems.

Thanks in advance,

[brianraver · Accepted solution]

Please note that the Software Use Rights, Service Description Guide, Product Supplement and/or the customer contract form the official and authoritative terms of use. As recommended by Denys, it is advised to work directly with your account representative to evaluate customer-specific scenarios. That said, I can provide some general guidance on your question:

• SAP HANA, runtime edition is only intended for use by and through the licensed application package which runs on the database. In short, this means that any data definition, manipulation, and selection needs to occur via the application layer and not directly in the database layer. One notable exception is the creation of views solely to be used for reporting purposes.
• SAP HANA, enterprise edition is a full use version of the database which can be used for essentially all purposes including direct database layer interaction for data definition, manipulation, and selection.
• SAP HANA Cloud is a full use version of the database offered in a cloud deployment model which can be used for essentially all purposes including direct database layer interaction for data definition, manipulation, and selection.

For your questions 1 and 2, the application licensing is irrelevant and per the descriptions above would require a full use license of SAP HANA, enterprise edition.

For your question 3, the answer is yes, SAP HANA Cloud would be a viable alternative. In fact, this would be my recommended strategic solution.

Your question 4 is a more complex topic and I would recommend you further research Indirect Static Read / Digital Access policies published by SAP. That said, in addition to those policies, the same guidelines mentioned above apply - distribution from the database layer would require a full use license while a runtime license would only allow distribution via the application layer.

[henrique_pinto · Accepted solution]

Hi Brian,

back in the day, hybrid/mixed scenarios used to be allowed, as long as there was a logical separation between the SAP and the non-SAP data. Last I checked, this logical separation could be achieved by leveraging multitenant Databases (MDC) and having the SAP DB in one tenant and the non-SAP DB in a different tenant DB.
In which case, the customer wouldn't need to acquire a full use SAP HANA license for the whole HANA server size, just for the size of the non-SAP Tenant DB.
Isn't this scenario possible anymore? The current SUR seems to indidicate it still is:
https://assets.cdn.sap.com/agreements/product-use-and-support-terms/sur/sap-software-use-rights-engl...

11.3 Deploying multiple SAP HANA tenants
If Licensee has licensed more than one SAP HANA edition, then each SAP HANA edition license type may only be deployed in its own unique
HANA tenant database within a HANA system. Use of System Database and Cockpit tenants on a HANA system is limited solely to administration
tasks.

That being said, this would not allow you to leverage the SAP ABAP capabilities on top of the non-SAP data, since it woud not be part of the SAP database. e.g. I dont think it would be possible to create a CDS View on top of the SAP DB that would "see" the non-SAP data from the other tentant DB (maybe it could be "hacked", i.e. you could try to create a synonym on the SAP DB pointing to the non-SAP table on the other tenant, and then create the CDS View on top of the synonym). But it at least would allow the other way around - you could create custom Calc Views on the non-SAP tenant DB that could access both the SAP data as well as the non-SAP data. And then you could consume these calc views from the BI tool of choice.

With SAP HANA Cloud, this latter scenario would also be possible, it just would be a bit more complicated since you'd need to create a HANA to HANA SDA connection and then create virtual tables on HANA Cloud pointing to the SAP tables on the On Prem HANA DB.

[FabioPagoti · Accepted solution]

Thanks you for the inputs brian.raver2 and henrique.pinto !

[dvankempen]

Hi Fabio,

Short answer: best to contact your (employer's) account representative, i.e. the "salesperson". They know the ins and outs of licensing.

[FabioPagoti]

Hello Denys. Thanks for the suggestion.

Unfortunately trying to contact this person is not a feasible option for me.

And broadly speaking, in customers usually the account representative is unknow, inaccessible, or is not able to quickly answer simple questions like this one. Those questions by the way should have the same answers for any customers so I don't get why this isn't something which can be easily checked.

For SAP partners, a similar experience happens because the responsible for the partnership does not about software licenses.

And for companies trying to become customers this person does not even exists.

I`ve read the whole SAP Software use rights and we have no information about that.

https://www.sap.com/about/trust-center/agreements/on-premise/product-use-and-support-terms.html?sort...

I hope some account representative is used to visit SAP Community and how knows getting in touch here, it would be a shame to lose a few-million euros deal only due to lack of transparency and simple information about licensing 😉

[dvankempen]

Hi Fabio,

Thanks for your feedback. I understand we need an answer that's a bit longer. Let me try to see if I can find some who is willing and able to clarify. Might take a bit of time.

[FabioPagoti]

I really appreciate if you can help getting to someone.

Many thanks!

[dvankempen]

You are welcome.