Indirect access is the use of SAP software by a person, device, or non-SAP application that reads or writes SAP data without logging in through an SAP interface, and it once produced a single court claim of 54.5 million pounds against Diageo in 2017 before SAP moved indirect use to its document-based digital access model in 2018. The exposure is real for almost every SAP customer, because modern estates connect SAP to e-commerce front ends, integration platforms, bots, and partner portals that all touch SAP data without a named user behind them.
What counts as indirect access
Indirect access happens whenever value flows out of or into an SAP system through something other than a directly licensed SAP user. A customer placing an order on a website that posts to SAP, a logistics system reading SAP inventory, or a reporting tool pulling SAP financials all create indirect use. The principle is that SAP charges for the data and process, not only for the screen, so the absence of an SAP login does not remove the license requirement.
| Scenario | Direct or indirect | License consideration |
|---|---|---|
| Employee logging in to SAP GUI | Direct | Named user license |
| Web store posting orders to SAP | Indirect | Digital access documents |
| Third-party CRM reading SAP customer master | Indirect | Digital access or named user |
| Integration bot creating purchase orders | Indirect | Digital access documents |
| Partner portal querying SAP pricing | Indirect | Negotiated, often disputed |
The boundary between indirect access and ordinary named user licensing is the heart of most disputes. SAP has argued that a single shared technical account behind a website does not license the thousands of end customers it serves, which is the position that drove the Diageo claim.
How SAP changed the rules in 2018
After the public backlash to the Diageo and Anheuser-Busch InBev cases, SAP introduced a document-based model in April 2018. Instead of trying to count indirect users, SAP now counts the documents that indirect use creates, which is the digital access model. The full mechanics, including the nine document types and the one-fifth weighting on three of them, are set out in the indirect versus digital access comparison and the digital access pricing guide.
Negotiation point: Quantify your own indirect document volume before any SAP measurement or audit. SAP offers a one-time conversion incentive for moving legacy indirect exposure to digital access, and that incentive is the lowest price most buyers will ever see for the same volume. Measure first, then convert on your terms, not under audit pressure. Buyers who wait for SAP to raise the issue negotiate from the weakest possible position.
How to size indirect access before SAP does
The work of quantifying indirect access starts with an inventory of every interface into and out of SAP. Each integration, web service, remote function call, and batch job is a candidate for indirect use, and the question for each is whether it creates one of the nine countable document types. SAP ships an estimation note and tooling that reads the document tables and projects an annual digital access volume, but that projection reflects how the systems are configured today, not how a buyer would license them given the choice. A disciplined sizing exercise separates documents created by genuinely indirect means from those created by licensed named users, because only the former consume digital access. The difference between a raw document count and a correctly attributed one can be several million documents a year on a connected estate, and that difference is the number that ends up in the contract.
Why it matters to buyers
Indirect access is the exposure most likely to surface as a surprise claim during an audit or a license audit, because it sits in the integrations that IT builds without licensing review. An unmodeled estate can carry millions of indirect documents a year, and the gap between what was licensed and what is used becomes the advantage SAP brings to a renewal. The wider exposure and the audit triggers that expose it are covered in the SAP indirect access cluster and the SAP licensing guide. Our SAP advisory practice maps indirect use across the estate and negotiates the conversion before SAP sets the number.