Ask HN: Is it legal to create an integration that expands who can access SAP?

1 points by ajax33 3 years ago | 1 comment

We have received requests from clients to build integrations between our SaaS platform and SAP.

Apart from enabling seamless communication between our platform and SAP to reduce the manual rework by users of both tools, we have also received requests from customers to duplicate some of the functionality provided by SAP in our platform, so that users can interact with SAP through our platform (which has a much better, modern UI/UX) as opposed to SAP which is a pain for them to use.

While I guess this should be okay as long as the user in our platform is also a user in SAP, I have questions about whether this would be problematic in case this is used by the customer to expand the pool of users that are able to access SAP to do operations - eg. contract or temporary workforce for whom SAP licenses have not been procured. Can someone please guide me regarding the legality of this and whether we can become a target for any legal action from SAP/others?

CallMeJim 3 years ago |

You're fine.

If there is any possibility of legal action, it'll be against the users who use your platform to connect with SAP.

And it's very unlikely that SAP would take legal action against them - their account manager may be in touch to discuss, but they don't jump into action prematurely.

Also: if you're really worried, talk to a lawyer instead of strangers on the internet.