PeopleSoft Planet

SAP was founded in 1972 as Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung by five former IBM engineers in Mannheim, Germany (Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Klaus Tschira, Claus Wellenreuther and Hans-Werner Hector).

The acronym was later changed to stand for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung ("Systems, Applications And Products in Data Processing"), in 1976 SAP GmbH was founded; the next year its headquarters was moved to Walldorf and since the 2005 annual general meeting the company's official name is just SAP AG. Henning Kagermann became the sole CEO of SAP in 2003.

Reputation

SAP is the largest software company in Europe and the third largest in the world[citation needed]. It ranks after Microsoft and IBM in terms of market capitalization. SAP is also the largest business application and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution and software provider in terms of revenue.

Oracle Corporation, SAP's major competitor in the USA, filed on 22nd March 2007 a case against SAP for malpractice and unfair competition in the Californian courts.

The complaint alleged that a Texas subsidiary, SAP TN (formerly TomorrowNow before purchase by SAP), which provides discount support for legacy Oracle product lines, used the accounts of former Oracle customers to systematically download patches and support documents from Oracle's website and appropriating them for SAP's use.

Some ERP market analysts suggest the suit could be part of a strategy by Oracle to decrease SAP's presence in the software maintenance market, in which Oracle and SAP compete (the latter through its subsidiary TomorrowNow).
 

Products

SAP's products focus on Enterprise resource planning (ERP), which it helped to pioneer. The company's main product is mySAP ERP. The name of its predecessor, SAP R/3 gives a clue to its functionality: the "R" stands for realtime data processing and the number 3 relates to a 3-tier architecture: database, application server and client (SAPgui). R/2, which ran on a Mainframe architecture, was the first SAP version.

Other major product offerings include Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO), Business Information Warehouse (BW), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Exchange Infrastructure (XI), Enterprise Portal (EP) and SAP Knowledge Warehouse (KW).

The APO name has been retired and rolled into SCM. The BW name (Business Warehouse) has now been rolled into the SAP NetWeaver BI (Business Intelligence) suite and functions as the reporting module.

The company also offers a new technology platform, named SAP NetWeaver. While its original products are typically used by Fortune 500 companies, SAP is now also actively targeting small and medium sized enterprises (SME) with its SAP Business One and SAP All-in-One.

According to SAP AG[citation needed], there are over 100,800 SAP installations serving more than 38,000 companies. SAP products are used by over 12 million people in more than 120 countries[citation needed].

SAP holds a partnership with Hewlett-Packard. This partnership will expand around new services linked to NetWeaver and Enterprise SOA (service-oriented architecture).

The software infrastructure for business applications developed by SAP is to be upgraded by Hewlett-Packard. One of the services to be upgraded is the Discovery System which was launched by SAP earlier this year. Among other services there are assessment, government and architecture for R3.