SAP is the world's largest business software company and the third-largest independent software provider in terms of revenues.[15] It operates in three geographic regions – EMEA, which represents Europe, Middle East and Africa; the Americas (SAP America, headquartered in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania), which represents both North America and Latin America; and Asia Pacific Japan (APJ), which represents Japan, Australia, India and parts of Asia. In addition, SAP operates a network of 115 subsidiaries, and has R&D facilities around the globe in Germany, North America, Canada, China, Hungary, India, Israel and Bulgaria, Turkey. A list of industry verticals and their explanations can be found at Recruit121.com, a SAP Jobs site.
SAP focuses on six industry sectors: process industries, discrete industries, consumer industries, service industries, financial services, and public services.[16] It offers more than 25 industry solution portfolios for large enterprises[17] and more than 550 micro-vertical solutions for midsize companies and small businesses.
Service-oriented architecture moves the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) landscape toward software-based and web services-based business activities. This move increases adaptability, flexibility, openness and efficiency. The move towards E-SOA helps companies reuse software components and not have to rely as much on in-house ERP hardware technologies which helps make ERP adoption more attractive for small- or mid-sized companies.
According to a press fact sheet from SAP, "SAP is the only enterprise applications software vendor that is both building service-orientation directly into its solutions and providing a technology platform (SAP NetWeaver) and guidance to support companies in the development of their own service-oriented architectures spanning both SAP and non-SAP solutions."
SAP's products focus on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). The company's main product is SAP ERP. The current version is SAP ERP 6.0 and is part of the SAP Business Suite. Its previous name was called R/3. The "R" of SAP R/3 stood for realtime - even though it is not a realtime solution. The number 3 related to the 3-tier architecture: database, application server and client (SAPgui). R/2, which ran on a Mainframe architecture, was the predecessor of R/3. Before R/2 came System RF, later dubbed R/1.
SAP ERP is one of five enterprise applications in SAP's Business Suite. The other four applications are:
- customer relationship management (CRM) - helps companies acquire and retain customers, gain marketing and customer insight
- product lifecycle management (PLM) - helps manufacturers with product-related information
- supply chain management (SCM) - helps companies with the process of resourcing its manufacturing and service processes
- supplier relationship management (SRM) - enables companies to procure from suppliers
Other major product offerings include: the NetWeaver platform, Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solutions, Duet (joint offering with Microsoft), Performance Management solutions and RFID. SAP offers SOA capabilities (calling it Enterprise SOA) in the form of web services that are wrapped around its applications.
While its original products were typically used by Fortune 500 companies[citation needed], SAP is now also actively targeting small and medium sized enterprises (SME) with its SAP Business One and SAP Business All-in-One.
On 19 September 2007 SAP announced a new product named SAP Business ByDesign. SAP Business ByDesign is a Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, and provides a fully integrated Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, On Demand. SAP Business ByDesign was previously known under the code name "A1S".
SAP officials say there are over 100,600 SAP installations serving more than 41,200 companies in more than 25 industries in more than 120 countries.[23]
But SAP has also in general been criticized for their One-size-fits-all product strategies implying that it now covers such a large scope that it has become a hindrance for company mergers and acquisitions..
