Ear­li­er this month, I joined about 800 indi­vid­u­als from SAP, SAP part­ners, SAP cus­tomers, and SAP user groups at SAP Are­na in Ger­many to cel­e­brate a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone: the SAP 50^th Anniversary.

Cel­e­brat­ing the 50-year anniver­sary of any tech com­pa­ny is mind-bog­gling. In the tech­nol­o­gy world, where things move so quick­ly, 10-year anniver­saries are mile­stones worth cel­e­brat­ing. Yet, 50 years ago, SAP start­ed a jour­ney to pro­vide enter­prise tech­nol­o­gy; here we are, decades lat­er, and SAP con­tin­ues to be rel­e­vant and nec­es­sary to orga­ni­za­tions across the globe. 

Cus­tomers con­tin­ue to want to do busi­ness with SAP. They need SAP just as much as they did 50 years ago — maybe more so — and they rec­og­nize how essen­tial the soft­ware is to the func­tion­ing of their orga­ni­za­tions. So for cus­tomers, part­ners, and SAP, it’s impor­tant we take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to pause and say, ​“You know what? We’ve done good. For 50 years, we’ve done good… Now, let’s get to 100 years.”

SAP Ecosys­tem Strength

What’s the trick to stay­ing rel­e­vant for anoth­er 50 years? The strength of the SAP ecosys­tem — a strength on full dis­play in Mannheim, Ger­many, at the SAP 50^th Anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. Eight hun­dred peo­ple showed up and cel­e­brat­ed an evening of SAP. And it was a big evening. The black-tie event start­ed at 4:30 p.m. local time and went past 1 a.m. (I only last­ed until 1 a.m.). It was wonderful. 

It’s impor­tant to empha­size and rec­og­nize that this event took place in the mid­dle of some impor­tant glob­al mat­ters. There is the con­flict hap­pen­ing in Ukraine, with Ger­many and Europe strug­gling with ener­gy resources because of the war. We still feel the lin­ger­ing effects of the glob­al pandemic. 

Amid these sit­u­a­tions and more, SAP found a respect­ful way to pause and take a moment to cel­e­brate this mile­stone. I walked into this event with a very open mind, and I walked out impressed. SAP did a great job. It was well-thought-out and well exe­cut­ed — an all-around won­der­ful time.

Coun­try of Origin

The SAP orches­tra kicked off the event, which was a sur­prise. I had no idea there was an orches­tra com­posed of SAP employ­ees and their instru­ments. And they were great! Dur­ing the event, there was a won­der­ful series of pre­sen­ta­tions to under­score the impor­tance of SAP to the Ger­man econ­o­my from the chan­cel­lor of Ger­many and the head of the Ger­man state where SAP is locat­ed. It was incred­i­ble to see how impor­tant SAP is to its home coun­try of Ger­many and its people.

We also heard pre­sen­ta­tions from Chris­t­ian Klein, Diet­mar Hopp, and Has­so Plat­tner. Has­so Plat­tner, one of the founders of SAP, has always been a sta­ple of the annu­al Sap­phire con­fer­ences, but he did not attend in 2022. See­ing Has­so back on stage felt like old times and see­ing him along­side Chris­t­ian was even more energizing.

Plans and Connections

I wasn’t in Ger­many just for the anniver­sary cel­e­bra­tion. I par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al plan­ning meet­ings and spent time with oth­er SAP lead­ers to talk about con­tent, engage­ment, and cus­tomers. I also had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch up with DSAG (Deutschsprachige SAP-Anwen­der­gruppe), the Ger­man SAP User Group. We con­duct col­lab­o­ra­tive research togeth­er each year, but we don’t have a chance to see one anoth­er face-to-face often. And it espe­cial­ly doesn’t often hap­pen on SAP’s home turf in Germany.

At ASUG, we’ve worked with SAP on SAP Sap­phire and the ASUG Annu­al Con­fer­ence for near­ly 20 years. My time in Ger­many was a nice oppor­tu­ni­ty to see peo­ple in their home envi­ron­ments or com­fort zones. I see them at our events in North Amer­i­ca, but dur­ing this trip, I felt as if I’d been invit­ed into their home to hear them speak. For exam­ple, when Chris­t­ian Klein spoke, it wasn’t a mas­sive, pro­duced keynote address. It was sim­ply the CEO speak­ing about the company. 

See­ing Chris­t­ian on stage with the founders of SAP was spe­cial. Think about it: how the orig­i­nal piece of soft­ware that five founders wrote 50 years ago has trans­formed into this real­ly cool and impor­tant thing. That’s a big deal. And it’s a mile­stone worth paus­ing to cel­e­brate. I’m ener­gized for the next 50+ years of con­nect­ing with SAP cus­tomers, part­ners, user groups, and with SAP.