SAP's restrictive SAP CAL License Agreements

[mani_sekaran_muthu]

I was informed by the product owner of SAP CAL (Cloud Appliance Library) that creating AWS (Amazon Web Services) spot instances would be a violation of SAP CAL License Agreements. This was in response to my blog: http://scn.sap.com/community/developer-center/hana/blog/2013/11/11/using-aws-spot-instances-with-sap...I modified the blog and removed all references to SAP CAL as per his request.

When users sign-up for SAP CAL, they have to accept one license agreement for SAP CAL and a second one for the solution they are creating (example: openSAP HANA).

WSA - Web Services Account (Example: AWS)

SAP CAL License Agreement:

Excerpt:

4. REMOTE ACCESS: You shall not download or otherwise receive delivery of the CAL Software, but, shall be required to (a) remotely access the CAL Software and (b) use the CAL Software to access SAP Software hosted on Your own WSA that You setup under an agreement directly between You and the applicable WSA provider.

SAP CAL openSAP HANA Solution License Agreement:

Excerpt:

4. REMOTE ACCESS: Except for the HANA Client, HANA Studio, and DSoDA software, You shall not download or otherwise receive delivery of the SAP Software, but, shall be required to (a) initially access the SAP Software remotely through the HANA Developer Center, and thereafter (b) use the SAP Software hosted on Your own WSA that You setup under a Developer Agreement directly between You and the applicable WSA provider for the sole purpose of developing Content.

Contradiction:

openSAP License agreement above allows for accessing SAP CAL software in AWS using non-CAL software after initial deployment whereas the SAP CAL License Agreement does not. The user's guides for the SAP CAL solutions deployed from this site (http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-47930) say AWS software can be accessed via non-CAL software (RDP, SSH OS access, etc.)

SAP CAL's use of RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) Access Point:

SAP CAL's use of RDP client (Microsoft product) on users' desktops (Connect operation) without explicit acceptance from the users to access AWS windows instances may violate Microsoft's license agreement with the user. This method is currently used for openSAP HANA & BI AWS Windows Instances.

My request to SAP:

1) Replace the remote access section of SAP CAL License agreement with the remote access section of SAP CAL Solution License Agreement.

2) Disable RDP access from SAP CAL and request users to access AWS Windows instances from their own PC RDP clients.

3) Allow use of spot instances for AWS Intances created via SAP CAL. With thousands of students enrolled in openSAP HANA & BI classes, the savings for students could be substantial during the openSAP classes and later. One example here: AWS charges for normal m2.2xlarge instances is 82 cents/hour vs 7 cents/hour for spot instances.