What is SAP?
2026-10-27
SAP SE is an international technology company founded in 1972 in West Germany. Today, SAP is one of the world’s largest and best-known developers and providers of enterprise software, with a particularly strong position in software solutions for business process management.
The company’s flagship product is its namesake ERP system, which, as of mid-2026, is known as SAP S/4HANA. The platform uses SAP’s proprietary HANA database, whose defining feature is that it processes data almost entirely in memory—a technology commonly referred to as in-memory computing.
In addition to its core product, SAP’s ecosystem includes a broad range of other enterprise software, including solutions for human resources management, procurement, and customer experience management. It also offers modules for analytics and specialized software development. SAP solutions are available both for on-premises deployment and through the cloud. However, deploying SAP products requires customers to follow the vendor’s requirements for the target hardware and software environment closely.