ERP Companies: Overview, Pros, and Cons

SAP is the world's leading provider of business software solutions, and is the third-largest independent software vendor in the world with more than 64,500 installations in 120 countries. More than 20,000 companies are using SAP solutions. In 2002 SAP had around $7.8 billion in sales. It was founded in 1972 by five former IBM employees; Dietmar Hopp, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner, Klaus Tschira, and Claus Wellenreuther. Their vision was to develop standard application software for real-time business processing. The company is headquartered in Weinheim, Germany with its main office in nearby Mannheim. The company is still a private corporation. Henning Kagermann is the CEO of SAP. SAP continues to lead the market by staying ahead of competition and listening to their customer's needs.

In 2000, with the internet taking off, SAP turned its focus to the user and developed mySAP Workplace and paved the way for the idea of an enterprise portal and role-specific access to information.

Headquarter SAP AG, Germany Русский: Гла...

English: Picture of the SAP Labs Brazil (Inside)

Logo of SAP Business ByDesign

In 2003 SAP introduced NetWeaver which provided their customers with solutions for end-to-end business processes. On December 15th, SAP announced that they are starting a computer security service for its corporate customers. In the service, SAP searches customers' business systems remotely for vulnerabilities in their security settings. In addition to probing its own software, SAP checks Internet gateways, user authorizations and interfaces to other systems during the evaluation, which lasts one or two days. As part of the analysis, SAP delivers a report detailing security gaps and recommending action. This is just another example of how SAP listens to their users and adapts to the needs of their customers.

There is an advantage to running SAP Applications on SQL Server 2000 (64-bit). Large SAP applications implemented in a 32-bit environment are encountering performance limitations due to constrained memory resources. Microsoft SQL...