SAP has again legal proceedings with the customer

SAP appeared in court together with the customer, Rent-A-Center company again. SAP considers that the last owes it $9 million for use of the analytical SAP Business Objects system over license arrangements.

However a claim was submitted by Rent-a-Center last month: it came to the Texas district court (USA), then the claim was redirected to District court of the USA on East District of Texas. Rent-a-Center wants to receive legal confirmation to the fact that it does not owe SAP the specified amount.

History began in June, 2005 when Rent-a-Center signed the license agreement from Business Objects afterwards purchased by SAP in 2007. At the beginning of this year SAP booked audit of an information system of Rent-A-Center and found out that it so uses Business Objects on bigger number of processors and for bigger number of users, than was stipulated in the license.

As a result of the company signed the agreement under the terms of which Rent-a-Center had to pay for each license which is used over put, and together with a retroactive payment for annual service quite impressive amount turned out: $9 million.

Rent-a-Center at the same time continues to insist that requirements of SAP are illegal because of separate points of the agreement made six years ago. "In this case it is not about a dispute on quality of software of SAP or its implementation", - the representative of SAP Andy Kendzie commented on a situation. "It is just license dispute between SAP and its client. Carrying out audit is customary practice for SAP", - he added.

Rent-a-Center licensed the Business Objects XI platforms and intended to implement it in all departments of the company. As the first part of the project for heads the analytical panels allowing to keep track of profitability of shops were created. Replication of a system became the second part of the project, it covers also the fields of purchases, sales, services and marketing.

Business of the company grows in high gear: in 1986 the retail chain stores contained only six shops, in their 2005 there were already 2.8 thousand that made investments into an analytical system just necessary, the Chief information officer of the company Tony Fuller said.

It is not the first case of a license dispute between clients and suppliers lately. For example, recently Informatica demanded from Hospital Corporation of America's Information Technology and Services to pay $6.3 million based on the similar audit booked last year.