SAP: Inside the Secret Software Power - Hardcover

Meissner, Gerd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071347852 ISBN 13: 9780071347853

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 2000

Synopsis

SAP came out of nowhere to become the world's second largest software company. Its stock rose 3700% in five years. It's made the cover of Fortune and other global business magazines. Everyone, including Bill Gates, is in awe of this Germany-based giantand at last they can learn what makes SAP tick.

In SAP: Inside the Secret Software Power, an internationally technology reporter takes an in-depth and penetrating look at SAP's founders, employees, customers, critics, competitors, and strategies. He profiles the company's meteoric rise in a real-life tale of power and intrigue.

About this title

Review

German company SAP, the global leader in business-enterprise software, is one of those omnipresent computer-age giants about which the public knows very little. Certainly its name, an acronym for Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing, isn't much help. Neither are the strong-arm spin-control tactics undertaken to keep it that way by the multibillion-dollar firm. It was launched in 1972, three years before Microsoft, and now ranks second in the software industry behind that Billy-come-lately in Redmond. SAP's long-standing veil of anonymity was first nudged aside in 1997, however, with the German publication of technology reporter Gerd Meissner's Inside the Secret Software Power. Now available in English, it offers a still-unparalleled appraisal of a company that came out of nowhere to dominate the market for behind-the-scenes software packages that manage financials, materials, and logistics for multinational companies like DuPont, Deutsche Telekom, Coca-Cola, and even Microsoft. Meissner traces SAP's development, along with the media relationships that defined much of its first three decades, to show where the company has come from and where it might be going. SAP howled in protest when the book was first released but has since taken a noticeably more proactive PR approach (which include TV commercials for its MySAP.com entry in the Internet wars). --Howard Rothman

From the Back Cover

SAP came out of nowhere to become the world's second largest software companyand, many say, the smartest. Its stock rose 3700% in five years. BusinessWeek ranked SAP's team of cochairmen among the top 25 managers in the world. Forbes ranked CEO Dietmar Hop with the power elite, one of the world's top ten creative and successful people.

What brought five IBM-ers with wildly disparate personalities together in 1972 to form a daring startup that didn't even own a computer of its own? How did this unassuming European group creep up and surpass such established forces as Big Blue - and then orchestrate an extraordinary penetration into America's high-end market which firmly entrenched its R/2 and R/3 software? What makes this maker of customized enterprise software so brilliant, so savvy, and so sought after that even Bill Gates is an admiring customer and partner?

This fascinating look at the inner workings of one of today's hottest companies was a major bestseller in Europe; now for the first time, it is available in English. International technology reporter Gerd Meissner opens the doors to SAP's offices to examine the minds and motives of the founder, employees, clients, and rivals who played key roles in the company's dramatic story.

Read SAP: Inside the Secret Software Power and you will understand how the quiet juggernaut known as SAP meticulously planned almost every more in its rise to global dominance in enterprise software...and cunningly improvised the rest. Revealing the strategies underlying its meteoric rise, this is a probing look at a technology megaforcehow it got to the top and where it is headed next.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0071347852
• ISBN 13: 9780071347853
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 238