SAP SE

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SAP SE
SAP SE logo
Sap-wdf.jpg
Type
Societas Europaea
Traded as FWB: SAP
NYSE: SAP
DAX Component
Industry Enterprise software
Founded Weinheim, Germany
(1972; 46 years ago)
Founder Dietmar Hopp
Hans-Werner Hector
Hasso Plattner
Klaus Tschira
Claus Wellenreuther
Headquarters Walldorf, Germany
Area served
Worldwide
Key people
Hasso Plattner (Chairman)
Bill McDermott (CEO)
Products See list of SAP products
Revenue Increase �23.46 billion (2017)[1]
Operating income
Increase �4.88 billion (2017)[1]
Net income
Increase �4.02 billion (2017)[1]
Total assets Increase �42.5 billion (2017)[1]
Total equity Increase �25.54 billion (2017)[1]
Number of employees
88,543 (2017)[1]
Website www.sap.com
SAP SE (/?se?'pi/; Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung,
"Systems, Applications & Products in Data Processing") is a German-based European
multinational software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage
business operations and customer relations.[2] SAP is headquartered in Walldorf,
Baden-W�rttemberg, Germany with regional offices in 180 countries.[3][4] The
company has over 335,000 customers in over 180 countries.[4] The company is a
component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index.[5]

Contents
1 History
1.1 Formation
1.2 Enterprise Resource Planning
1.3 Corporate restructuring
1.4 Focus on cloud
1.5 SAP S/4HANA
2 Acquisitions
3 Business and markets
4 Enterprise service-oriented architecture
4.1 Enterprise SOA
5 Partnerships
6 SAP PartnerEdge
7 Communities
8 Organization
9 SAP Labs
10 SAP User Groups
11 Conferences
12 Competitive landscape
13 Philanthropic efforts
14 Autism hiring
15 Bribery and corruption
15.1 South African allegations
15.2 Panamanian bribery
16 See also
17 References
18 External links
History
Formation
Xerox aimed to exit to the computer industry in 1975,[6] it asked IBM to migrate
its business systems to IBM technology. As part of IBM's compensation for the
migration, IBM was given the rights to the Scientific Data Systems (SDS)/SAPE
software, reportedly for a contract credit of $80,000.

Five IBM engineers from the AI department[7][8] (Dietmar Hopp, Klaus Tschira, Hans-
Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner, and Claus Wellenreuther, all from Mannheim, Baden-
W�rttemberg) were working in an enterprise-wide system based on this software, only
to be told that it would no longer be necessary. Rather than abandoning the
project, they decided to leave IBM Tech and start another company.[9]

In June 1972, they founded the Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung ("System

Analysis and Program Development" / "SAPD") company, as a private partnership under
the German Civil Code.[9]

Their first client was the German branch of Imperial Chemical Industries in
�stringen,[10] where they developed mainframe programs for payroll and accounting.
Instead of storing the data on punch cards mechanically, as IBM did, they stored it
locally in the Electronic System which using common Logical database for all
activities of Organization.[clarification needed] Therefore, they called their
software a real-time system, since there was no need to process the punch cards
overnight (for this reason their flagship product carried an R in its name until
the late 1990s). This first version was also a standalone software that could be
offered to other interested parties.[11]

Enterprise Resource Planning

In 1973, the first commercial product was launched. It was called SAP R/98,[12] and
offered a common system for multiple tasks. This permitted the use of a centralized
data storage, improving the maintenance of data. From a technical point of view,
therefore, a database was necessary.[13]

In 1976, SAP GmbH was founded, and moved its headquarters the following year to
Walldorf, Germany. Three years later, in 1979, SAP launched SAP R/2, expanding the
capabilities of the system to other areas, such as material management and
production planning. In 1981, SAP brought a re-designed product to market. However,
SAP R/2 did not improve until the period between 1985 and 1990. SAP released the
new SAP R/3 in 1992. SAP developed and released several versions of R/3 through
1995. By the mid-1990s, SAP followed the trend from mainframe computing to
client/server architectures. The development of SAP's internet strategy with
mySAP.com redesigned the concept of business processes (integration via Internet).
[9] As a result, R/3 was replaced with the introduction of SAP ERP Central
Component (ECC) 5.0 in 2004.[14] Architectural changes were also made to support an
enterprise service architecture to transition customers to a services-oriented
architecture. The latest version, SAP ERP 6.0, was released in 2006. SAP ERP 6.0
has since then been updated through SAP enhancement packs, the most recent: SAP
enhancement package 8 for SAP ERP 6.0 in 2016.[15]