SAP

About SAP

Financials

Dated, source-cited figures. Estimates are marked.

Competitive Landscape

Who SAP competes with, and how they differ.

Oracle7.8/10

Oracle is SAP's oldest and largest ERP rival, competing suite-for-suite with Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP against SAP S/4HANA Cloud while also selling the database layer many SAP deployments historically ran on.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Workday

Workday built cloud-native HCM and financials from scratch and directly competes with SAP SuccessFactors, typically winning cloud-first enterprises reluctant to migrate a legacy SAP ERP footprint.

Microsoft7.8/10

Microsoft Dynamics 365 undercuts SAP S/4HANA in mid-market ERP and bundles tightly with Azure/Microsoft 365, though Microsoft's core business is far broader and less ERP-focused than SAP's.

9 products reviewed on TopReviewed

ADP7.4/10

ADP is the incumbent payroll and workforce-management vendor SAP SuccessFactors competes against for US mid-market HCM deals, with ADP's strength concentrated in payroll and compliance rather than a broader ERP-integrated suite.

1 product reviewed on TopReviewed

Salesforce7.7/10

Salesforce dominates CRM and customer engagement, ground SAP tried to enter via its 2019 Qualtrics acquisition before divesting it in 2023; the two now compete mainly at the edges of SAP CX versus Salesforce Sales/Service Cloud.

2 products reviewed on TopReviewed

Company Timeline

Key milestones in SAP's history, with sources.

1. Sep 12, 2024Acquisition

   Completes $1.5B acquisition of WalkMe

   SAP finalized its all-cash acquisition of Israeli digital adoption platform WalkMe at $14.00/share (~$1.5B), folding it into SAP's Business Transformation Management and Joule AI copilot portfolio.

   ca.marketscreener.com
2. Mar 13, 2023Milestone

   Agrees to sell its Qualtrics stake to Silver Lake and CPP Investments for $12.5B

   SAP agreed to sell all 423 million shares of Qualtrics to Silver Lake and CPP Investments at $18.15/share, recovering roughly $7.7B for its stake four years after paying $8B for the company; the deal closed July 2023.

   cmswire.com
3. Nov 11, 2018Acquisition

   Agrees to acquire Qualtrics for $8B in cash, days before its planned IPO

   SAP agreed to buy survey-software maker Qualtrics for $8B in cash, pulling the company out of its scheduled IPO week to add experience-management data to SAP's operational core.

   techcrunch.com
4. Sep 18, 2014Acquisition

   Agrees to acquire Concur for $8.3B

   SAP agreed to acquire travel-and-expense software maker Concur Technologies for $129/share (~$8.3B), its largest SaaS acquisition to date, rounding out its Ariba/Fieldglass/Concur "business network" strategy.

   techcrunch.com
5. May 22, 2012Acquisition

   Agrees to acquire Ariba for $4.3B

   SAP agreed to acquire cloud procurement network Ariba for approximately $4.3B ($45/share), extending its cloud push into spend management; the deal closed October 2012.

   techcrunch.com
6. Dec 3, 2011Acquisition

   Agrees to acquire SuccessFactors for $3.4B

   SAP agreed to acquire cloud HR pioneer SuccessFactors for $40/share (~$3.4B, a 52% premium), its first major cloud-HCM move; the deal closed February 2012 and SuccessFactors became the SAP SuccessFactors HCM suite.

   allthingsd.com
7. May 12, 2010Acquisition

   Agrees to acquire Sybase for $5.8B

   SAP agreed to acquire database and mobile software maker Sybase for $65/share (enterprise value ~$5.8B) to compete with Oracle in databases and mobile enterprise software; the deal closed in July 2010.

   techcrunch.com
8. Jul 6, 1992Launch

   Launches SAP R/3, moving from mainframe to client-server architecture

   SAP launched R/3, a 3-tier client-server ERP system that broke from mainframe-only R/2, letting customers run on Unix or Windows servers and turning SAP into a global ERP standard through the 1990s.

   sap.com
9. Nov 4, 1988Milestone

   Goes public on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange

   SAP AG listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, a milestone that funded its expansion beyond Germany as R/2 adoption grew among large European multinationals.

   sap.com
10. Apr 1, 1972Founded

    Founded in Mannheim/Walldorf, Germany by five former IBM engineers

    Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Klaus Tschira, Hans-Werner Hector and Claus Wellenreuther left IBM to found SAP (Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung) after an enterprise-software project for an IBM client was reassigned away from their team.

    sap.com