SAP was founded in June 1972 as Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung ("System Analysis and Program Development") by five former

IBM engineers in Mannheim, BadenWrttemberg (Dietmar Hopp, Klaus Tschira, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner, and Claus Wellenreuther).[ The acronym was later changed to stand for Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung ("Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing"). As part of the Xerox exit strategy from the computer industry, Xerox retained IBM to migrate their business systems to IBM technology. As part of IBM's compensation for the migration, IBM acquired the SDS/SAPE software, reportedly for a contract credit of $80,000. The SAPE software was given by IBM to the founding ex-IBM employees in exchange for founding stock provided to IBM, reportedly 8%.[citation needed] Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) was SAP's first ever customer in 1972.[3] In 1973 the SAP R/1 solution[citation needed] was launched.[4] Six years later, in 1979, SAP launched SAP R/2.[4] 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 developed and released several versions of R/3 in 1992 through 1995. By the mid-1990s, SAP followed the trend from mainframe computing to client-server architectures. The development of SAPs internet strategy with mySAP.com redesigned the concept of business processes (integration via Internet).[2] SAP was awarded Industry Weeks Best Managed Companies in 1999.[5] In 1976, "SAP GmbH" was founded, and moved its headquarters the following year to Walldorf. SAP AG became the company's official name after the 2005 annual general meeting. AG is short for Aktiengesellschaft (corporation). In August 1988, SAP GmbH transferred into SAP AG (a corporation by German law), and public trading started 4 November. Shares are listed on the Frankfurt and Stuttgart stock exchanges.[2] In 1995, SAP was included in the German stock index DAX. On 22 September 2003, SAP was included in the Dow Jones STOXX 50.[6] In 1991, Prof. Dr. Henning Kagermann joined the board; Dr. Peter Zencke became a board member in 1993.[7] Claus Heinrich, [8] and Gerhard Oswald[9] have been members of the SAP Executive Board since 1996. Two years later, in 1998, the first change at the helm took place. Dietmar Hopp and Klaus Tschira moved to the supervisory board and Dietmar Hopp was appointed Chairman of the supervisory board. Henning Kagermann was appointed as Co-Chairman and CEO of SAP next to Hasso Plattner. Werner Brandt joined SAP in 2001 as a member of the SAP Executive Board and Chief Financial Officer.[10] Lo Apotheker was a member of the SAP Executive Board and president of Global Customer Solutions & Operations from 2002, and was appointed Deputy CEO in 2007. Apotheker became co-CEO alongside Kagermann in 2008. Henning Kagermann became the sole CEO of SAP in 2003.[11] In February 2007, his contract was extended until 2009. After continuous disputes over the responsibility of the development

organization, Shai Agassi, a member of the executive board who had been named as a potential successor to Kagermann, left the organization.[12] In April 2008, along with the announcement of Apotheker as co-CEO, the SAP supervisory board also appointed three new members to the SAP Executive Board, effective 1 July 2008: Corporate Officers Erwin Gunst, Bill McDermott, and Jim Hagemann Snabe.[13] With the retirement of Kagermann in May 2009, Apotheker took over as the sole CEO. He was replaced by new co-CEOs Bill McDermott, head of field organization, and Jim Hagemann Snabe, head of product development, effective 7 February, In November, 2010, SAP lost a $1.3 billion intellectual property law suit (related to the actions of the SAP subsidiary TomorrowNow) to Oracle Corporation cited as the largest software piracy judgment in history.[14] SAP filed post-trial motions to lower the damage awarded to Oracle and stated it may also file an appeal.[15] On 9 September 2011, the verdict was overturned by Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton, who called the penalty "grossly excessive."[16] In December 2011, SAP AG agreed to buy SuccessFactors Inc. for $3.4 billion in cash or 52 percent more than the share closing price on 2 December 2011. With the acquisition, SAP AG will become more competitive with Oracle Corp. in the Cloud computing market.[17]

SAP's products focus on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). The company's main product is SAP ERP. The current version is SAP ERP 6.0 and is part of the SAP Business Suite. Its previous name was R/3. The "R" of SAP R/3 stood for realtime even though it is not a realtime solution. The number 3 related to the 3-tier architecture: database, application server and client (SAPgui). R/2, which ran on aMainframe architecture, was the predecessor of R/3. Before R/2 came System RF, later dubbed R/1. SAP ERP is one of five enterprise applications in SAP's Business Suite. The other four applications are: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) helps companies acquire and retain customers, gain marketing and customer insight

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) helps manufacturers with product-related information Supply Chain Management (SCM) helps companies with the process of resourcing its manufacturing and service processes Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) enables companies to procure from suppliers Other major product offerings include: the NetWeaver platform, Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solutions, Duet (joint offering with Microsoft), Performance Management

solutions and RFID. SAP offers service-oriented architecture capabilities (calling it Enterprise SOA) in the form of web services that are wrapped around its applications. While its original products were typically used by Fortune 500 companies[citation needed], SAP now actively targets small and medium sized enterprises (SME) with its SAP Business One and SAP Business All-in-One. On 19 September 2007 SAP announced a new product named SAP Business ByDesign. SAP Business ByDesign is a software as a service (SaaS) offering, and provides a fully integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, On Demand. SAP Business ByDesign was previously known under the code name "A1S".[24] In October 2007, SAP AG announced the friendly takeover of Business Objects. This acquisition expanded SAP's Product Suite of Business Intelligence (BI) solutions and increased the customer installed base to 89,000. [25] In February 2009 SAP AG, which invested in Coghead, purchased the start-ups intellectual property. SAP will only be using the companys technology as an internal resource and has no plans to offer Cogheads products to its customers.[26] In May 2010 SAP AG announced that it is buying the database software maker Sybase for US$ 5.8 billion in cash.[27] The deal closed at the end of July 2010. Sybase will continue to run as a separate, independent unit but will be leveraged across the other SAP areas. As of July 2010 TechniData is a 100% subsidiary of SAP AG.[28] In October 2010, SAP AG announced the release of SAP HANA 1.0 (High-performance Analytics Appliance), an in-memory appliance for Business Intelligence allowing real-time analytics. SAP Enterprise Learning (environment) is an enhancement of the previous version of the learning management system, SAP Learning Solution 600. Apart from the features in SAP Learning Solution 600, SAP Enterprise Learning (environment) contains a virtual learning room feature powered by Adobe Connect.[29] SAP officials say there are over 100,600 SAP installations serving more than 41,200 companies in more than 25 industries in more than 120 countries.[30] SAP Press has published a book on SAP Enterprise Learning.[31] SAP Human Resources Management System is one of the largest modules in the SAP R/3 system which consists of many sub modules that assist with tasks of human resource management