Is there a standard license-compliant way to export data from SAP BW to an Azure-server?

Question

I am unsure of how I can use the SAP BW data. Is there a standard license-compliant way to export data from SAP BW to an Azure-server?

My company is using SAP, and I want to analyze our financial data in PowerBI or PowerPivot. My plan is to create different reports for different groups. The underlying data will however be the same for all and I would therefore benefit from setting up a centralized database where all relationships and meassures are created and stored (I think Analysis Services and a Storage Account in Azure would do the trick). I would then create PowerBI or PowerPivot reports that connect to the centralized database.

Through the SAP Excel-plugin Analysis for Office I can extract the data (I only need 2 Analysis-reports with a few 100 000 rows each). The data consists of one data set with a P&L with distributed income and costs / profit centre / month and one with production data / profit centre / month. 5 years of actuals and a few budget periods.

My concern is whether our license permits extraction of the data as described above. Our IT-people says a license for importing data into a different BI-system cost at least 50 000 EURO (which is way beyond my budget). My questions are thus:

1. Is the discribed process permitted or forbidden according to standard SAP licence? I only use their own data extraction tool (Analysis) in a completely normal way and then do some analysis on that...

2. If forbidden, is there a work-around with the same end-result (centralized database with PowerBI & PowerPivot reports)? Are here for example different levels of data that are allowed to extract and levels that are not? How will I know what is ok and what is not ok?

PS. I have already tried to connect PowerBI directly to the BW, but that gives me low flexibility and because of the the limited data volume I think an import would be advantageous anyhow (faster, easier to modify the data and combine it with other data sets and parameters). DS.

Answer 1

I would say permitted as long as it's for yourself. But as soon as you start to distribute the exported data to other users, SAP would like to have a license fee, no matter HOW you distribute. Exception is if the other user already have an SAP license for the data. The key here is "indirect usage", quite extensivly discussed in media the last couple of years.

Your best bet is to study "indirect usage" and then contact your SAP account manager, since any approach here most likely violates the license agreement.