What is the history of SAP?

Systems, Applications, Products in data processing or SAP was originally introduced in the 1980’s as SAP R/2 which was a mainframe system that provided users with a soft-real-time business application that could be used with multiple currencies and languages. Later when client servers were introduced SAP brought out a server based version of their software called SAP R/3, henceforth referred to as SAP, which was launched in 1992. They also developed a graphical user interface or GUI to make it more user friendly and to move away from the mainframe style user interface. For the next 10 years SAP dominated the large business applications market. It was successful primarily because it was extremely flexible. Because SAP was a modular system meaning that the various functions provided by it could be purchased piecemeal it was an extremely versatile system. All a company needed to do was purchase the modules they wanted and customize the processes to match the company’s business model. SAP’s flexibility, while one of its greatest strengths is also one of its greatest weaknesses. We will now turn to the audit issues surrounding SAP.

SAP AG
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SAP AG
Type: Aktiengesellschaft (FWB:SAP, NYSE: SAP)
Founded: Weinheim (1972)
Headquarters: Walldorf, Germany
Key people: Henning Kagermann, CEO
Shai Agassi, Development
Industry: Computer software
Products: ERP
Revenue: 8.5billion EUR (2005)
Employees: 32,205
Website: www.sap.com
SAP AG (FWB:SAP, NYSE: SAP) is the largest European software enterprise, with headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. SAP was founded in 1972 as System analyse und Programment wicklung by five former IBM engineers in Mannheim, Germany. The acronym was later changed to stand for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung ("Systems, Applications And Products in Data Processing") and since the 2005 annual general
meeting the company's official name is just SAP AG.

Reputation

SAP is the third-largest software company in the world. It ranks after Microsoft and Oracle in terms of market capitalization. SAP is the largest business application and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution software provider in terms of revenue.

Products

SAP's products focus on ERP, which it helped to pioneer. The company's main product is SAP R/3; the "R" stands for realtime data processing and the number 3 relates to a 3-tier architecture: database, application server and client (SAPgui). SAP R/3's predecessor was R/2 which ran on a Mainframe architecture.

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 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.

Reportedly, there are over 100,800 SAP installations at more than 28,000 companies. SAP products are used by over 12 million people in more than 120 countries.