SAP
SAP develops enterprise software, cloud business applications, data platforms, and business AI that connect finance, procurement, HR, supply chain, manufacturing, customer experience, analytics, and other core processes. Its stated purpose is to help the world run better and improve people's lives by helping organizations make better decisions, automate work, and transform.
At a Glance
- Large global enterprises and multinational corporations
- Small and midsize businesses
- Public-sector organizations and governments
- Regulated industries requiring sovereign cloud, security, or compliance
- +7 more
AI Tools by SAP
(1)
SAP Business Data Cloud
Managed SAP Data Fabric Platform
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Latest News
Advancing SAP Lakehouse and new data-fabric innovations in SAP Business Data Cloud for the Autonomous Enterprise; SAP highlighted Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris, universal catalog, SAP BDC Connect, expanded Databricks capabilities, and generally available SAP Reltio.
SAP and NTT announced cooperation on trusted sovereign cloud and SAP Business AI capabilities for public-sector organizations and regulated industries.
SAP TechEd announcements positioned Joule Studio, AI developer tooling, and autonomous execution as ways for developers to build governed AI agents and workflows.
SAP announced Q3 2026 results: current cloud backlog €24.1 billion, cloud revenue up 26%, Cloud ERP Suite revenue up 29%, and total revenue up 13%.
Products & Services
Cloud ERP for finance, risk, projects, procurement, manufacturing, supply chain, asset management, and R&D, with SAP HANA, analytics, AI, and automation.
Fully managed SaaS data foundation that unifies and governs SAP and third-party data, preserves business context, and supports analytics, data products, and agentic AI. Components include SAP Analytics Cloud, Datasphere, Business Warehouse, SAP Databricks, HANA Cloud, Master Data Governance, and SAP Reltio.
Platform for application extension, integration, data, analytics, AI, security, and process automation; includes SAP Build, Integration Suite, AI Foundation, and Joule Studio.
Embedded AI capabilities, AI Foundation, Joule conversational assistance, Joule Agents, Knowledge Graph, and AI-supported automation across SAP applications and non-SAP systems.
Market Position
SAP is a global enterprise-applications leader with a broad integrated suite spanning ERP, finance, procurement, HCM, CRM, supply chain, data, and AI. Its differentiation is deep business-process functionality, installed-base reach, industry and multinational support, integration across a suite, and a large partner ecosystem; principal competitors include Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Workday, Salesforce, and specialized cloud ERP vendors such as Oracle NetSuite and others.
Leadership
Founders
Dietmar Hopp
Former IBM employee; one of the five programmers who left IBM to establish SAP in 1972.
Hasso Plattner
Former IBM employee and programmer; co-founded SAP and later served as a long-time SAP executive and supervisory-board leader.
Claus Wellenreuther
Former IBM employee and programmer; co-founded SAP and left the company in 1980 for health reasons.
Klaus Tschira
Former IBM employee and programmer; co-founded SAP in 1972.
Hans-Werner Hector
Former IBM employee and programmer; co-founded SAP in 1972.
Executive Team
Christian Klein
Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Executive Board
Joined SAP as a student in 1999; previously CFO of SAP SuccessFactors, SAP Chief Controlling Officer, and COO. Joined the Executive Board in 2018, became co-CEO in 2019, and sole CEO in 2020.
Muhammad Alam
Member of the Executive Board, Product Experience & Advisory
Leads AI-enabled product adoption and data-driven product strategy; previously president and chief product officer of Intelligent Spend Management.
Board of Directors
Founding Story
On April 1, 1972, five former IBM employees started SystemAnalyse Programmentwicklung (System Analysis Program Development). They wanted to create standardized enterprise software that integrated business processes and enabled real-time data processing, working closely with customers to understand their operations. Their first customer was a nylon factory belonging to ICI in Östringen, Germany.
Business Model
Revenue Model
SAP monetizes recurring cloud subscriptions and SaaS, software-support contracts, time-based and perpetual software licenses, and implementation, professional, consulting, training, and premium support services. Cloud revenue is its largest revenue stream, followed by software-support revenue; SAP also sells packaged transformation journeys such as RISE with SAP and SAP GROW.
Pricing Tiers
SAP publishes quote-based pricing rather than a standard public price.
Public-cloud, non-S/4HANA BTP services can be purchased on a pay-as-you-go basis.
BTP is also available through subscription plans and annual cloud-credit blocks.
Limited-time shared-tenant trial with preconfigured/sample data and core capabilities.
Target Markets
- Large global enterprises and multinational corporations
- Small and midsize businesses
- Public-sector organizations and governments
- Regulated industries requiring sovereign cloud, security, or compliance
- Finance and professional services
- Manufacturing and industrial companies
- Enterprise resource planning and cloud transformation
- Financial close, planning, treasury, compliance, and working-capital management
- Source-to-pay, procurement, travel and expense, and external-workforce management
- Supply-chain planning, manufacturing, logistics, inventory, and asset management
- Human resources, payroll, talent acquisition, workforce planning, and employee experience
- Customer marketing, commerce, sales, service, and customer experience
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