SAP stands for Systems Applications and Products in Data Processing. Founded in the year 1972 with its headquarters at Wall Dorf, Germany, it is a market leader in ERP software. The company was founded by 5 ex-IBM employees and is a multi-billionaire company with their customers spanning across the globe.
Historical Overview
- In 1972, SAP came up with its first system R/1, where R stands for real-time data processing. It was primarily a financial accounting solution.
- Later, SAP introduced the R/2 system, which followed a two-tier architecture i.e. a separate presentation layer and and an application with database layer
- In early 1990’s, SAP released SAP R/3 system, which followed a 3-tier architecture i.e separate presentation layer, separate application layer and a separate database layer. SAP R/3 gained immense popularity as it consisted of a suite of tightly integrated, large-scale business applications. We will discuss about R/3 system in detail in future lesson.
- Later SAP R/3 version 4.7 was released which along with application server supported web infrastructure (for Web support).
- In 2004, SAP released mySAP ERP 2004. Soon SAP came up with SAP ECC ( Enterprise Central Component ) which was based on SAP NetWeaver 2004 technology platform. SAP ECC systems became extremely popular expanding SAP’s customer base to many fold.
- In 2005, SAP released SAP ECC 6.0 which continues to be a popular product of SAP till date
- In 2015, SAP has released it’s next generation ERP product SAP S/4HANA running on top of popular SAP HANA database. Since 2015, SAP has released a new version of SAP S/4HANA every year.
SAP Enhancement Package
SAP released Enhancement packages to extend and add functionality to ECC system. Each EHP released added or upgraded the ECC system by adding new functions and users could activate the new business functions via Switch Framework. The core SAP component remained intact. The latest EHP released was EHP 8 for SAP ECC 6.0 in the year 2016.
SAP Business Suite
A reason for high popularity of SAP software is SAP System is highly customizable. Thus it can be easily customized to meet the needs of any industry Aerospace, Automotive, Banking, Chemicals, Healthcare, Industrial Manufacturing, Mining, Education, Media and so on.
SAP’s goal is to help enterprises manage their business efficiently. SAP Business Suite is an ERP product which contains applications and industry specific solutions for enterprises of any size and belonging to any domain. With SAP Business Suite, enterprises can manage their complete end-to-end business.
The SAP Business Suite consists of five components
- Enterprise Resource Planning ERP
- Customer Relationship Management CRM
- Supply Chain Management SCM
- Supplier Relationship Management SRM
- Product Life-Cycle Maintenance PLM
The ERP component in turn consist of various functional modules SD, MM, FI, CO, HR to name a few. Not all modules needs to be implemented. An organization will implement modules that is required for their business function. SAP Modules are tightly integrated with one another.
SAP Business Suite supports integration between various applications from different ERP vendors and also supports cross-company processes.
SAP Business Suite is scalable and provides internet enabled applications. All these features makes SAP Business Suite a top-notch and trusted ERP software in the business domain.
SAP ERP supports end-to-end business processes for finance, human capital management, asset management, sales, procurement, and other business functions.
SAP Applications and Components
A component, you can say, is the smallest, separately producible, deliverable, installable, and maintainable software unit. The SAP components is then further utilized to power the various applications of SAP Business Suite. SAP ERP Central Component, famously known as SAP ECC is the core component of SAP ERP. Examples of other components will be SAP SCM, SAP NetWeaver Portal and so on.