ABSTRACT
The average person on the street might be unfamiliar with SAP (Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing). When hearing of the global software industry, people usually think of Microsoft, the owner of Windows, or IBM, the pioneer of the computer industry, not least because they use desktop or laptop computers based on the Microsoft Windows operating system and Microsoft Office applications on a daily basis. In fact, SAP, headquartered at Walldorf in Germany, is the largest enterprise management and collaborative business solution provider and the third-largest independent software provider in the world. Furthermore, both Microsoft and IBM are SAP users. More importantly, 80 percent of the 500 biggest companies in the world listed in Fortune magazine use SAP systems; entrepreneurs and analysts in the field of management refer to SAP as the “management maestro” behind these top enterprises. Over 100,600 implementations of SAP management software applications are run by more than 32,000 users in 120 countries across the globe. SAP was set up in Germany in 1972 by five young men from IBM Germany including Dietmar Hopp and Hasso Plattner. While IBM was simply trying to sell as many large computers as possible, Plattner and his colleagues believed that many enterprises needed to replace their expensive customized software with standardized management software for their business procedures. Their opportunity arose from a vast management software market and they established their own company in 1972 to provide enterprises with more effective standard enterprise management software. Hasso Plattner, one of the founding fathers, is still the chairman of SAP’s Supervisory Board. In 1992, I joined SAP Headquarters in Germany, only a medium-size enterprise at that time, and became one of the 40 members of the core R3 R&D team, which went on to make SAP the top global management software enterprise. At present, SAP has branches in more than 50 countries, has more than 40,000 employees and is listed on the Frankfurt and New York stock exchanges.
