General information

About SAP

The company SAP was founded in 1972 by 5 former IBM employees (Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Hans-Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira and Claus Wellenreuther) with a vision for the business potential of business software in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg. Today, it is one of the world's largest software companies with a market capitalization of 165 billion euros, making it the most valuable German company, with over 400,000 customers in more than 180 countries, over 100,000 employees and more than 100 development centers worldwide. The company's activities focus on the development of software for handling all of a company's business processes, such as human resources, production, purchasing, sales, controlling, accounting and warehousing. The name SAP (Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing) stood for the company's former central software, SAP ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). In addition, the software company also offers cloud-based services such as SAP Cloud Platform. The offering corresponds to the cloud computing model "Platform-as-a-Service" (PaaS) and offers companies the possibility to develop and operate cloud-based applications for handling business processes.

Key milestones:

1977 the company got its present name. "Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing Ltd.

1980 he company - then already 20 employees and 3.8 million DM turnover, moved to Walldorf. The development of SAP R/2 starts.

1988the GmbH became an AG. In its first year on the stock market, the company took in around DM 340 million and made a profit of almost 70 million. The company has just under 1000 employees and just as many customers.

1922 he general market release for the SAP R/3 system follows successful installation at selected pilot customers.

2002 Sales are 7 billion euros and the company employs 29,000 people and has about 25,000 customers in 120 countries.

2010 Acquisition of Sybase (specializing in databases and mobile) for just under $6 billion.

2019 Revenues are just under 25 billion euros and the vendor employs over 100,000 people and has about 400,000 customers in 180 countries.