Data flow in FlexNet Manager for SAP Applications

Communication between IT Asset Management and the SAP Admin module is facilitated using web services. Web services need to be configured on the SAP Admin module (see Configuring the Web Service on the SAP Admin Module System for Communication with an Inventory Beacon) and on the inventory beacons. On the inventory beacons, the SAPService web service is configured automatically during configuration of IIS (see Configuring IIS for Communication between the Inventory Beacon Server and the SAP Admin Module).

The SAP Admin module connects to its dependent SAP systems using RFC-enabled functions and collects user and consumption data. The collected data is held in a staging database. The SAP Inventory Agent reads the data and transfers it to the IT Asset Management database. The data is analyzed in IT Asset Management, and the resulting license-type and user recommendations are staged on the IT Asset Management server.

The SAP Inventory Agent connects to the IT Asset Management server and retrieves the recommendations for processing. Any modifications of the user primary data are distributed to the dependent SAP systems.

Independent SAP systems are not connected to the SAP Admin module. The SAP Inventory Agent accesses and collects the user primary record information via Remote Function Call (RFC).

Figure: Data flow between the components in a SaaS implementation