Is ASUG Lying About the Frequency of SAP Indirect Access?

ByShaun Snapp

Executive Summary

  • ASUG has been providing false information around the frequency of indirect access claims.
  • We describe why ASUG is doing this and the accuracy of information provided by ASUG on IA.

Introduction

I have critiqued ASUG in several previous articles, such as ASUG’s Biased and Inaccurate Coverage of SAP Indirect Access. My observation of ASUG’s media output is that ASUG is uniformly repeating SAP’s marketing messaging. It appears to have no independence from SAP whatsoever and writes false information about SAP. This article will explain what has happened to ASUG. This article will cover what ASUG says about how frequently customers face an indirect access claim by SAP. But first, we need to get into what SAP would like customers to think about indirect access.

Our References for This Article

If you want to see our references for this article and other related Brightwork articles, see this link.

Notice of Lack of Financial Bias: We have no financial ties to SAP or any other entity mentioned in this article.

  • This is published by a research entity, not some lowbrow entity that is part of the SAP ecosystem. 
  • Second, no one paid for this article to be written, and it is not pretending to inform you while being rigged to sell you software or consulting services. Unlike nearly every other article you will find from Google on this topic, it has had no input from any company's marketing or sales department. As you are reading this article, consider how rare this is. The vast majority of information on the Internet on SAP is provided by SAP, which is filled with false claims and sleazy consulting companies and SAP consultants who will tell any lie for personal benefit. Furthermore, SAP pays off all IT analysts -- who have the same concern for accuracy as SAP. Not one of these entities will disclose their pro-SAP financial bias to their readers. 

What SAP Would Like Customers to Think About IA

We don’t have to search very far to determine what SAP would like customers to think about indirect access. In the article How to Best Understand Faux Change on Indirect Access, I covered that SAP created its announcement to make customers minimize their preparation regarding indirect access. I won’t go over the entire article, but in conclusion, I stated the following:

SAP intends to mislead the SAP customer base into lowering their guard by making a few slight modifications to indirect access that may end up amounting to as close as possible to zero change in SAP’s enforcement of indirect access.

Therefore, it is clear that SAP does not want customers to worry about their “pretty little head” about indirect access. And the reason for this is straightforward.

If customers do not prepare for indirect access, SAP can spring indirect access to their customers and receive less prepared pushback. I concluded that the entire reason for the announcement on indirect access that occurred at SAPPHIRE was to make many customers that we were concerned about it less concerned.

The entire announcement did not do anything to reduce customers’ concern regarding indirect access but instead was worded so that it seemed like it did.

The Frequency of Indirect Access Claims

When asked directly about indirect access, ASUG seems to have several answers.

  1. One is to state that few customers receive an indirect access claim, and the reason customers have heard so much about it is because those scenarios tend to be “noisy.”
  2. Secondly, ASUG will offer its services as a mediator if a customer faces an indirect access claim from SAP.

As for the second response, I cover that in the article on the “faux change to indirect access,” so I won’t repeat it here. But for the former answer, it is interesting how well this dovetails with what SAP wants customers to believe. This is a constant issue with ASUG that they state precisely what SAP wants to be declared. However, an independent entity would not perfectly match up with another entity on every issue like this by chance. And it is well known that SAP uses ASUG as an outlet for publishing SAP marketing material. For example, if Brightwork suddenly began to have talking points copied from the press releases of a software vendor on the website, one would be right to question our independence. For this reason, we have ceased to see ASUG as having any independent voice from SAP.

Therefore, ASUG’s statements on any topic can be seen as SAP’s statements on any topic, and there is no reason to assume that ASUG is filtering this message in any way.

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Conclusion

We don’t know exactly how prevalent indirect access is. However, entities like ASUG, Deloitte, or Accenture want indirect access to be as silent as possible. When Deloitte or Accenture are helping a company with a software selection, they do not inform their client of indirect access liabilities that come with SAP. Why would they? It reduces the likelihood of the customer choosing SAP. And this is the problem with entities like ASUG, Deloitte, or Accenture. They pretend to represent their members’ or clients’ interests, but ultimately they are all simply tools of SAP.