Microsoft
Education Series
Education Series
You may recall in legal news, SAP’s successful legal victory over their customer Diageo, resulting in a court judgement of £54 million their favor. At issue is the topic of “indirect access”. Microsoft uses the term “multiplexing” for the same concept, and defines it thusly:
“Multiplexing” is when customers use hardware or software to pool connections, reroute information, or reduce the number of devices or users that directly access or use a product. Multiplexing can also include reducing the number of devices or users a product directly manages.
In a modern enterprise with dozens of business applications which are deeply integrated and interconnected, the result is a complex web of data transfers between various self-developed and supplier-sold systems. The result of these interconnections has been interpreted by SAP, Microsoft and other suppliers to require user licenses for end users who never directly interact with that supplier’s systems.
Taking Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM product as an example: If a licensed user configures CRM to generate a report as a text file, then emails that text file to a non-licensed user, Microsoft contends that the recipient user requires a license. In Microsoft’s words: “he or she is receiving the direct benefit of the automation”.
In effect, this interpretation of the concept of multiplexing or indirect access can be used by Microsoft and other suppliers to require user licenses for many more users than would normally be considered to require a license. In some cases, Microsoft has flatly stated that if the “client is getting any business benefit from the product directly or indirectly” then a license is required.
We advise our clients to not agree to these terms. They have enormous potential for abuse during future audits and represent an unbounded risk that could potentially result in very large unplanned audit fines and license costs.
If you have questions on this subject, or any other Microsoft topic - don't hesitate to contact us and arrange a call with one of our Microsoft Subject Matter Experts!
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