Sisense Fusion Embed is the Sisense subscription for companies that build analytics into their own product. The MSA states that a customer may buy a Fusion Embed subscription, as stated in the Sales Order, that allows it to embed the Product in its own products and sell the bundled solution to third parties. The customer then agrees to comply with the Sisense Fusion Embed Product Terms Addendum (the SF Embed Addendum).[2] The addendum supplements, and is incorporated into, the Master Subscription Agreement.[1] Embedded use is the main exception to the MSA’s general ban on making the Product available to third parties.
Why Embed is a separate licence
Under the standard terms, the licence is for the customer’s internal business purposes, and the customer may not resell, sublicense, lease, time-share or otherwise make a Product available to a third party other than Affiliates and authorized subcontractors, except as the SF Embed Addendum provides.[2] A customer that exposes Sisense dashboards to its own customers without a Fusion Embed subscription, or without the rights in the Sales Order, therefore risks operating outside the licence. The same restriction applies to the Sisense Cloud and Customer Hosted subscriptions that the customer uses for its internal analytics.
The right to bundle
The SF Embed Addendum grants the customer and its Affiliates a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited licence to incorporate the Sisense FE Product into the Bundled Product, to market and distribute the Bundled Product, and to sublicense the Bundled Product to End Customers.[1] The MSA defines the Bundled Product as the technical integration of Customer Owned Software and the Product listed in the Sales Order, and an End Customer as an individual or entity to which the customer sells, provides or distributes the Bundled Product and with which it has an agreement to provide it.[2]
The addendum limits the grant in several ways.
- Only as part of the Bundled Product. The customer must use the Sisense FE Product only as part of the Bundled Product and comply with the Sales Order, including the Subscription Period, the type of Customer Owned Software eligible for integration, and whether access is On-Premise Access or SaaS Access.[1]
- Internal use limited. The customer may use the Sisense FE Product for an internal use case only as needed for the development and support of the Bundled Product, and not for any other internal use.[1] A company that wants to use Sisense both to embed analytics in a product and for internal business reporting should therefore check that its Sales Order includes a separate internal subscription.
- On-Premise or SaaS. On-Premise Access means that the End Customer accesses the Bundled Product by installation at its location or on servers it controls. SaaS Access means access through a service or web access that the customer provides.[1] Where Sisense is installed at an End Customer, the MSA’s Authorized Servers/Cores definition covers the End Customers’ servers or Cores as specified in the Sales Order.[2]
End Customer provisions
For each End Customer that has On-Premise Access, the customer must ensure that the End Customer has signed an End Customer Agreement before downloading or using the Bundled Product, containing terms materially the same as the Minimum Terms in the addendum’s Appendix 1. Sisense may amend the Minimum Terms in its reasonable discretion and notify the customer, and the customer must use commercially reasonable efforts to reflect changes in the next update of its End Customer Agreements.[1] The Minimum Terms include a non-exclusive, non-sublicensable, non-transferable licence in object code only, internal use only within the Sales Order scope, no reverse engineering, standard warranty disclaimers with a statement that Sisense and its licensors give the End Customer no warranty and have no liability to it, and an obligation to erase the Bundled Product on termination.[1]
The addendum also allocates responsibility.
- Sisense does not provide support or maintenance services to End Customers for any reason. The customer is solely responsible for them.[1] The Support Services Addendum accordingly covers only the Product, not the Bundled Product or the customer’s operating environment, and requires the customer to replicate a Failure in Sisense’s environment before reporting it.[7]
- The customer may not give warranties or make commitments on Sisense’s behalf, and is solely responsible for representations that differ from the addendum, the Sales Order or the MSA.[1]
- The customer indemnifies Sisense against third-party claims, including those of End Customers, arising from violation of these End Customer obligations.[1]
Termination and the wind-down licence
On termination of the MSA the customer must promptly stop promoting the Sisense FE Product and the Bundled Product, stop using the Sisense FE Product within the Bundled Product, and stop using Sisense’s intellectual property and confidential information.[1] There is one exception. If Sisense terminates the agreement other than for the customer’s material breach or its insolvency-type Winding-Down Procedures, and the customer has paid and continues to pay the fees, the licence extends for each End Customer that had a valid End Customer Agreement at the termination date. The Extended License lasts until the earlier of the end of the subscription period in the End Customer Agreement (not counting renewals) and 12 months from the termination date. The customer must then comply with its termination obligations within 15 days.[1] A customer that terminates the agreement itself does not obtain this extension under the wording. The catalog program is Post-termination extended licence.
White Labeling
The customer may White Label the Product, meaning use it without displaying Sisense trademarks, only if the Sales Order states “Co-Branded White Labeling” or “Full White Labeling”. Co-Branded White Labeling requires the customer to state in its documentation and marketing materials that the Bundled Product is “powered by Sisense”. Full White Labeling means the customer need not retain any Sisense Trademarks anywhere in the Bundled Product.[2] Where Sisense trademarks are used, the customer may use them only to sell, market, advertise and promote the Bundled Product and must submit promotional materials that contain them to Sisense for approval before distribution.[1]
AI functions and add-ons in embedded products
The MSA says that Sisense may introduce AI Functions into the Product. The customer owns the Input and Output (AI Content) as between the parties, is solely responsible for it, and acknowledges that outputs may be biased, false or inaccurate.[2] Connections to Generative AI Services are operated by third parties: the customer must log in to those services with its own credentials, they are governed by separate agreements, and the customer indemnifies Sisense for losses arising from their use.[2] Sisense’s plans page states that the Enterprise plan includes the option to bring a customer’s own large language model.[5] Add-ons that external parties develop and offer through the Sisense marketplace are Third-Party Software. They are not part of the Product and are governed by the customer’s separate agreement with the provider.[2] A customer that embeds Sisense in its own product should therefore check what its own End Customer Agreement says about AI Content and third-party add-ons, because Sisense disclaims responsibility for both in the MSA.
Compose SDK
Compose SDK is a developer toolkit for building analytics into an application in code. The Sisense guide says that developers can execute composable queries on Sisense data models from their client application, render ad-hoc visualisations from code, embed visualisations from predefined Sisense widgets and create interactive data exploration with filter components.[3] Sisense announced general availability on 12 March 2024 and described its analytics suite as composed of Fusion Embed, Sisense Cloud and Compose SDK.[4]
On licensing, Sisense states that Compose SDK is available to all Sisense customers.[3] The guide lists the technical requirements: a Sisense instance on Linux version L2022.10 or later, an application built with React, Angular or Vue and TypeScript, and a Node.js package manager.[3] The public pages do not describe a separate SDK fee or a separate unit. The people who use an SDK-built application to see data are still Users under the MSA, in the role the application’s access assigns them, and Sisense documentation describes Viewer as a role that cannot create or edit dashboards.[6] An SDK application offered to a customer’s own customers is a Bundled Product in the MSA’s sense only if the Sales Order is a Fusion Embed subscription. The restriction on making the Product available to third parties applies otherwise. The Sisense plans page lists Compose SDK next to an iframe as an embedding method for the Self-serve plan.[5]
Counting and compliance
- Metric. The catalog metric is End Customer (Fusion Embed); the quantities and any End Customer limits are in the Sales Order.
- Audit. The MSA audit right applies to a Fusion Embed customer in the same way as to any other: Sisense may audit once per calendar year, and excess use above the Sales Order limits leads to a Sales Order or invoice for the excess.[2]
- Records. Keeping a register of End Customer Agreements, with their dates and the Minimum Terms in force at signing, allows the customer to show that each On-Premise End Customer signed before download.
Out of scope
This article does not cover the contents of any customer’s End Customer Agreement, Sisense’s data processing addendum, the Sisense marketplace’s own add-on terms, or SDK open-source dependencies. It does not describe Sisense Cloud Data Teams (CDT) products beyond noting that the Support Services Addendum has a separate clause for them.[7]