System Analysis and Program Development (SAP)

1972 Foundation Five former IBM employees start a company they

call SAP Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung
("System Analysis and Program Development").

Development of the fledgling company's first

Night owls
programs takes place mainly at night and on
weekends.
Initial success At the end of its first year in business, SAP employs
nine people and generates DM 620,000 in revenue.

SAP completes its first financial accounting system

1973 Modularity – RF. This system serves as the cornerstone in the

ongoing development of other software modules of
the system that will eventually bear the name SAP
R/1.

SAP demonstrates its flexibility for the first time,

1974 Flexible converting its RF system from the DOS operating
system to OS over an eight-week period.

Customer base Still just two and a half years in existence, SAP has
a list of 40 reference customers.

Companies can now handle their purchasing,

1975 Integration inventory management, and invoice verification
with SAP's RM system.

An SAP trademark begins to emerge – the

integration of all of the company's applications.
Trademark Materials management data flows directly into
financial accounting on a value basis, while invoice
verification and posting can be completed in one
step.

The company begins installing its system for

1976 First steps abroad customers outside of Germany for the first time.
Two companies in Austria decide to implement
SAP software.
 The farm equipment manufacturer John Deere
1978 SAP parle français demonstrates SAP's international viability by
developing a French-language version of the
company's accounting software in an in-house
project.

SAP begins operations on its own server, Siemens

1979 Centralization
7738, for the first time. Up until this point, its
employees' development activities have been
distributed across the data centers of regional
customers such as ICI, Thermal, Knoll,
Grünzweig+Hartmann, and Freudenberg.
An in-depth examination of IBM's database and
Technological shift
dialog control system causes SAP to rethink its
software, paving the way for SAP R/2.