The SAS® Cost and Profitability Management 8.4 desktop client fails to connect with the "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error


Enabling Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) causes the SAS Cost and Profitability client to fail to connect to the back-end servers upon initial login to the client. 

As a result, the SAS Cost and Profitability Management client displays the following error:

Failed to log on. Ensure that the following conditions are met. The username and password are entered correctly for a valid user account that can be authenticated. The user is a member of the SAS Cost and Profitability Management group in SAS Metadata. The SAS Cost and Profitability Management license is valid and not expired.

If you click Details < < for additional information, the following message is displayed:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object. 

In addition, the following error might occur in the SAS Cost and Profitability Management log file located on the middle-tier server:

ERROR org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.support.ErrorPageFilter - Forwarding to error page from request [/login] due to exception [Exception thrown executing org.apereo.cas.web.flow.login.SendTicketGrantingTicketAction@5195334b in state 'sendTicketGrantingTicket' of flow 'login' – action execution attributes were 'map[[empty]]']
org.springframework.webflow.execution.ActionExecutionException: Exception thrown executing org.apereo.cas.web.flow.login.SendTicketGrantingTicketAction@5195334b in state 'sendTicketGrantingTicket' of flow 'login' – action execution attributes were 'map[[empty]]'