What is SAP?

SAP is an acronym for Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung (German). In English it would mean System, Application and Products in Data Processing.

Now something about SAP as a company.

• SAP AG as a company was founded in 1972 by five former IBM employees with a vision to develop standard application software for real-time processing.

• SAP is a world leader in business solutions, offering comprehensive software and services that address the unique needs of customers around the world.
  

• At the end of the year 2007, SAP had 44,023 people worldwide, of whom 14,749 were located in Germany.

• The portion of total revenue that SAP spent (based on the adjusted measure) on R&D in 2007 was unchanged at 14%.

• SAP 's main competitors are Microsoft and Oracle.

• SAP is the world's largest business software company and the third-largest independent software provider in terms of revenues.

• SAP 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 and parts of Asia.

Well that was enough for me to get interested in the company. But what about the products and services SAP has to offer. So here is brief info about that:

SAP provides a comprehensive range of enterprise software applications and business solutions which are divided into various packages.

1. Industry Specific eg Banking, Aerospace & Defense, Retails etc.

2. Enterprise Applications
* SAP - Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
- Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
- Supply Chain Management (SCM)
- Supplier Relationship Management (SRM)

3. Business Solutions
* SAP Advanced Planner and Optimizer (APO)
* SAP Analytics
* SAP Apparel and Footwear Solution (AFS)
* SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW)
* SAP Business Intelligence (BI)
* SAP Catalog Content Management (CCM)
* SAP Enterprise Buyer Professional (EBP)
* SAP Enterprise Learning
* SAP Portal (EP)
* SAP Exchange Infrastructure (XI)
* SAP Financial and Controlling (FICO)
* Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC)
* SAP Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS)
* SAP Internet Transaction Server (ITS)
* SAP Knowledge Warehouse (KW)
* SAP Manufacturing
* SAP Master Data Management (MDM)
* SAP Materials Management (MM)
* SAP Plant Maintenance (PM)
* SAP Production Planning (PP)
* SAP Sales and Distribution (SD)
* SAP Service and Asset Management
* SAP Solutions for mobile business
* SAP Solution Composer
* SAP Solution Manager
* SAP Strategic Enterprise Management (SEM)
* SAP Test Data Migration Server (TDMS)
* SAP Training and Event Management (TEM)
* SAP NetWeaver Application Server (Web AS)
* SAP xApps
* SAP Quality Maintenance (QM)

4. Solutions for Small and Midsize Enterprises
* SAP Business One (6.2, 6.5, 2004, 2005, 7.x)
* SAP Business ByDesign
* SAP Business All-in-One

5. Platforms and frameworks
* SAP Enterprise Services Architecture
* SAP NetWeaver Platform
o SAP NetWeaver Portal (formerly SAP Enterprise Portal)
o SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence
o SAP NetWeaver Visual Composer
o SAP Auto-ID Infrastructure
o SAP Composite Application Framework
o SAP Netweaver Development Infrastructure
* SAP Business Connector (deprecated/removed from product range)

6. Legacy Platforms

* SAP R/3
* SAP R/2

7. Others

* SAP CCMS, monitoring program
* SAPgui
* eCATT
* SAP Central Process Scheduling, process automation and job scheduler

Services:

1. Consulting services – Offers best-in-class consulting through planning, implementation, and optimization services
2. Business process outsourcing – Supports business process outsourcing (BPO) providers in setting up BPO services that generate sustainable business value
3. Hosting and application management – Operates, manages, and maintains SAP solutions for organizations of any size
4. Rapid solution introduction – Provides a standardized process for introducing all SAP products to the market, helping customers achieve rapid business value
5. Software maintenance and support – Provides services for planning, implementation, and operations
6. Custom development – Incorporates SAP development strategies to deliver solutions that meet unique business goals
7. Tools, technologies, and methodologies – Deliver the capabilities and knowledge that minimize total cost of ownership and maximize your return on investment in SAP solutions
   

Thats quite a list of products and services. But guys don't get wary of it as yet. This was just to have an idea that how vast is SAP. For those of you who want to get more info I have mentioned some links in the end.

The crux of the matter is that SAP provides softwares to integrate the functioning of an enterprise to enhance efficiency and effectiveness. The applications to do so are complex and highly superior and all the Enterprises may not need them. So SAP has created some specific packages to suite to need of various types of users and there by making the life easier for the Implementation people as well.
If you want you may get into specifics of each and every package but I think we should be content with an overview at initial stage.

(We will get into advantages and Yesss!! disadvantages of SAP subsequently)

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Well I didnt invent this info, So here the pages which I referred:
1. http://www.sap.com/about/investor/faq/facts/index.epx
2. http://searchsap.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid21_gci214190,00.html
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG
4. http://www.sap.com/industries/index.epx
5. http://www.sap.com/solutions/index.epx
6. http://www.sapfans.com/sapfans/sapprod.htm
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SAP_products