topic Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP in Welcome Corner Discussions

Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

Ruthvik_Chowdary — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 04:22:30 GMT

Hello Coffee Corner folks,

when was the first time you heard about or saw SAP, can you recall those early carrier days of yours?

#SAPCarrier #SAPLife

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

thomas_jung — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 07:04:54 GMT

For me it was my first day on first job right out of University. I showed up, went through orientation, and then was shuffled off to the SAP implementation kickoff meeting. One other new hire (right out of University as well) and myself were going to be the developers assigned to this next generation ERP project. I had no idea what SAP even was before that fateful day.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

abo — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 08:56:03 GMT

My career in SAP began by chance, through a common connection. Before that, SAP was the 3 letters on the back of F1 cars' rearview mirrors 🙂

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

craigcmehil — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 12:13:52 GMT

For me it was 2003 and my boss said hey I need you to read about this thing called SAP so when you return to the US you can do the implementation there. Mind you I was a web application developer and never even heard of SAP, the closet to “ERP” for me was the MAPICS system. Needless to say I read, learned and ended up working for SAP and never returning to the US for the implementation 🙂

In case anyone is wondering, they did the implementation and successfully completed it on time.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

sergei-u-niq — Sat, 13 Nov 2021 14:24:13 GMT

I did an internal (small) project at my university as intern, and we were using a file based storage and the task was to switch to a DB based storage, we were going to use some freely available small db (I think it was going to be mysql, but not absolutely sure). But then my boss told me that the university is going to implement "SAP" in some future, so we should do something with "SAP" to be future-proof. A quick research revealed that SAP was some system using SAP DB. So, SAP DB it became. My internship ended before the implementation on SAP DB started, but I followed them for one or two years. At that time we had not the slightest idea what SAP was, nor that using SAP DB didnt make us more nor less future-proof in the sense of compatibility with the "soon to come SAP Implementation" 😄

My first contact with actual SAP was in 2007, almost a decade later.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

Dan_Wroblewski — Sun, 14 Nov 2021 09:36:24 GMT

I tried to get a job at Mercury Interactive (later bought by HP) and they were all ready to hire me but my current employer wouldn't let me out of my contract. At first I was VERY disappointed, but I stayed where I was for another few months and then got a job offer at SAP, which was the best thing that could have happened to me. When I interviewed was the first time I had ever heard of the company.

P.S.: When I came, I was clueless, and I had heard that there were such loyal employees that their baby's first words were "ABAP"

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

mmcisme1 — Mon, 15 Nov 2021 12:57:05 GMT

Mine might be a bit different than the above. I heard about SAP at my job. They needed me to go train to use it. And they needed me to be a part of the first training group. I was 5 months pregnant. I went to boat camp which was 4 weeks. It was an interesting time. I got the flu while I was there, and I found a med center. (I had to because I didn't know which over the counter medication I could take.) They let me go and told me what I could take. I got better that weekend. Went back to training, and finished with a certification test. Which I proudly passed.

When we went live I had just returned from my 6 weeks off after having Nate. I then was spending the nights most nights helping to fix everything that didn't work right. Yes, we had an implementation partner. And that is quite another story.

So I doubt very much that I'll ever forget when I "heard" of it.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

timoelliott — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:48:09 GMT

Ruthvik, that's a great question!

For me, SAP was the enemy 😀

I ran the competitive team at a small French startup called... BusinessObjects. So I spent my days coming up with arguments about why we were a better business intelligence solution than anything SAP could offer (I remember being slightly awed at the depth of loyalty of SAP customers). I guess we did something right, because SAP eventually decided the same and purchased us in 2007 -- and I celebrated 30 years with the combined companies this year! 😀

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

StephanieMarley — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:55:01 GMT

A friend of a friend worked at SAP near the Philadelphia airport around 1996. I only had limited knowledge on SAP -- and because of my Cognos reporting skills I was hired in 1999 as a BW consultant. So many years later I wouldn't have changed a thing. #lifeatSAP

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

thomas_jung — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:57:23 GMT

I remember when the education offices were right by the airport. It was very convenient for taking classes.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

charlesreed — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:59:42 GMT

When I was in high school, working for an office supply company that rolled out SAP inventory management. The most memorable part of the training we received was to say S-A-P and not SAP.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

LauraJamieson — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 21:03:48 GMT

I was part of the SAP competitive task force! My team was building some special training so that we could connect to and report from BW data. We had just finished building all of the training when SAP acquired us. I don't think the training organization had ever been so prepared for an acquisition. 😀

Congratulations on 30 years!

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

AnnaJ1 — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 21:43:57 GMT

I can't think that far back.

Perhaps it was '89, Esso in Australia started to look at this German Software R/2. Some of us hated the idea, the IT director came back from Germany wearing an SAP watch, and we started on our SAP journey. I then joined SAP in 93.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

NigelJames180 — Tue, 16 Nov 2021 23:43:08 GMT

Straight out of uni for me too.

https://twitter.com/njames/status/1460752812942389251

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

qmacro — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 04:14:54 GMT

For me it was when I'd finished my Classics degree at University College London and had started work (in the IT department) at Esso Petroleum on Victoria Street in London. After some weeks of graduate training (in COBOL, JCL and so on) I joined the Database Support Group (DBSG) where my very first task was to create a backup & recovery strategy for the (IMS DB) databases belonging to a project just starting out on the floor above. There were over 100 databases which was unusual, all with VSAM dataset clusters defined via IDCAMS. This project turned out to be an SAP implementation project, installing and configuring SAP R/2 4.1. When I finished my time in DBSG, I joined the project, dived completely into the SAP tech world, and have never looked back since.

That was in 1987.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

MattHarding — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 04:42:26 GMT

Working in R&D at a company called Fairlight (for their MFX3 product used for Audio Engineering) in Sydney and kept seeing these high paying jobs in the paper for something called "Sap". Then my high school friend Al Templeton started working at a new company doing large SAP OO custom development with IS-U who was hiring any good developer who wanted to learn SAP (at double my current salary!) so learn SAP I did!

Side note - This was OO in 4.0B so I believe Thomas' answer for when OO was introduced is wrong since we were productive at multiple customers (albeit using global includes and pushing the basis to the limit when compiling).

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

richie_pinkman — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 04:48:22 GMT

Hello everybody! Greetings from Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico).
The first time I heard of SAP was in 2006, I was hired by a pharmaceutical company (PiSA Labs) as Microsoft .net Developer. As part of the onboarding process we had a training in SAP as "Users", days later I had an introduction to ABAP by one of the Senior SAP Developers that was about to leave the company, it turned that one of my colleagues and I were replacing him. My first ABAP assignment was changing a label in a SAPScript, I remember that I used to hate the editor (we were running R/3 4.5B). A few months later I was hired by IBM as SAP ABAP Developer and it completely changed both my career an my life. 😃

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

qmacro — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 14:51:52 GMT

is that the same Fairlight that produced the CMI? Wowser.

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

MattHarding — Wed, 17 Nov 2021 19:49:36 GMT

That's the one - used on many of the great albums of the 80's (but was being mostly used for audio in Movies by the time I got there)

Re: Can you remember the first time you heard of SAP

boobboo — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 08:36:40 GMT

Interesting question - I first heard about SAP when I was on my placement year at University. I was working at a UK Bank and they were implementing SAP for HR back in 1999/2000 and my department was going to be working on the Basis implementation work. I had a job offer from the bank for post-University and would work on the project, although I wanted to go back home - so did not take it. Who knew that 2 years later I would land in the Basis field anyway and that over 20 years later I would still be working in the field.