SAP

Five former IBM employees founded SAP on April 1, 1972, in Walldorf, Germany. Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Klaus Tschira, Claus Wellenreuther, and Hans-Werner Hector launched the company to solve a specific problem: businesses were struggling with disconnected data silos across different departments. Their initial vision was to create integrated systems that allowed companies to manage their operations from a single source of truth.

The corporation grew from that small German startup into the world's largest vendor of enterprise resource planning software. In 2014, it restructured as a pan-European societas Europaea to better manage its global footprint. Today, the organization employs nearly 110,000 people and operates in over 180 countries, serving as critical infrastructure for multinational corporations worldwide. [edit]