SAP Overview

What is SAP?

In a nutshell, SAP is Enterprise Software that integrates all of the functional areas of business (i.e. marketing, manufacturing, finance, etc). SAP brings traditionally isolated people together through software processes. It is an exciting, powerful software package and is one of the biggest growth areas in IT. Many employers are looking for students with exposure to or even an interest in SAP.

Headquartered in Walldorf, Germany, SAP is the world's largest business software company – with more than 47,804 employees at sales and development locations in more than 50 countries worldwide.

The SAP global development approach focuses on distributing development across the world in strategically important markets. A global network of SAP Labs spanning Bulgaria, Canada, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, and the United States, enables SAP to operate locally, yet organize globally.

As the global technology research unit of SAP, SAP Research significantly contributes to SAP's product portfolio and extends SAP's leading position by identifying and shaping emerging IT trends through applied research and corporate venturing. SAP Research has highly skilled teams in 11 research centers worldwide.

A Brief History of Enterprise Information Systems

1. Beginnings of Corporate Information Systems

The original corporate information systems were developed in-house and are now known as legacy systems. Each functional business unit had a separate, customized information system (computer system) which was totally different from the information system of any other business unit. Each business unit had its own data, and would not share this data with other units. Therefore, there was much duplicate data stored, and the data was inconsistent from business unit to business unit. These systems were difficult to support and manage.

2. Evolution to Packaged Software

Software vendors began to see the problems with these "legacy" information systems. They began to sell packaged software that each business unit could buy and that would be fairly standard from business to business. For example, one vendor could supply an accounting package to many different corporations. This package would be very similar from organization to organization, and would only require minor customization. This outside vendor would provide support for their package, and this vendor could take advantage of economies of scale. The disadvantage of this approach is that each business unit had a different software package from a different vendor, and data could not be shared among systems.

3. True Enterprise Information Systems

Software vendors began to see the shortcomings of packaged software for each business unit and decided to integrate the software for all the business units into one large software package. A module of the software would encompass a functional area of the business, and all of these modules would link and could be centrally managed. In addition, all of the modules could make use of the same data. SAP is a true Enterprise Information System. Peoplesoft, Baan, JD Edwards, and Oracle are other examples of current Enterprise Software vendors.