SAP

From Wikicompany

SAP AG is the name of the biggest European software company.

SAP's products are in the Enterprise resource planning (ERP) business sector.

SAP is an acronym for "Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung", which means "Systems - Applications - Products in data processing".

More than 27,000 companies run SAP, at over 91,500 locations. SAP users number over 12 million people in more than 120 countries. The company employs about 30.000 people.

Products

The company's main product is SAP R/3, where the "R" stands for Realtime, the number 3 relates to the three tier application architecture: database, application server and client. The predecessor to R/3 was R/2.

Other major offerings include:

• APO - Advanced Planner and Optimizer
• BW - Business Information Warehouse
• CRM - Customer Relationship Management
• SRM - Supplier Relationship Management
• HRMS - Human Resource Management Systems
• KW - Knowledge Warehouse

The company also offers a new technology platform, named SAP Netweaver.

While its original products are mostly used by larger companies, SAP is now also offering products for small and medium sized enterprises (SME) with SAP Business One and SAP All In One.

History

The company was founded in 1972 by the former IBM employees: Claus Wellenreuther, Hans-Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira, Dietmar Hopp and Hasso Plattner.

In 2004, Microsoft had preliminary discussions about merging with SAP, those talks did not advance.