Introduction to SAP

Introduction to SAP the Company

Five former IBM employees founded SAP in 1972 in Germany. The vision was to develop standard application software for real-time business processing. The first releases, called R1 and R2, were mainframe-only applications. SAP started with a set of Financial applications and then added logistics, manufacturing, and HR. In the 1980s, they moved to a true 3-tiered client-server solution and by the early 1990s, R/3 was released to the market.

Introduction to SAP the Software

In 2000, SAP renamed their solution mySAP and released the latest version of SAP, ECC or Enterprise Core Component, and the most recent release is ECC 6.0. SAP's current release strategy is to provide Enhancement Packs with additional functionality instead of releasing new versions of the software. SAP's Enhancement Pack strategy eliminates major upgrades and allows customers to choose which enhancements to apply to their systems.

SAP Module Introduction

SAP's solution includes a number of functional modules, which support transactions to execute key business processes, such as:

This is simply a brief introduction to SAP. For a more in-depth look at each module, please browse our Listing of SAP Modules or review our SAP training options.

Please Note: The Learn SAP pages on this site are intended to be brief summaries for SAP customers who are encountering SAP for the first time. For more advanced knowledge, please review the articles in our SAP Library, and our SAP Training offerings for both Super Users and Project Teams.