Young, but with legacy issues

It was a lavish celebration at the SAP Arena in Mannheim. Nearly 1,000 guests were in attendance, celebrating not only 50 years of SAP, but also an equally rare event: It is the first photo with the entire and current SAP Executive Board (plus two guests). Even at SAP's Annual General Meeting this year, it was not possible - in deference to shareholders - to get the entire Executive Board on stage, either virtually or in real life.

The joy at the successful photo can be seen in SAP CEO Christian Klein. Due to the current SAP stock market price, the two co-founders, Hasso Plattner and Dietmar Hopp, probably have less to laugh about. These days, SAP presents a sad picture, which also meant that the celebration was organized in a very backward-looking way. Among other things, SAP manager Lars Lamadé, a veteran of SAP history, was able to bring a U.S. pioneer to the stage. Tom Pfister started at SAP in Europe and then was one of the first employees at SAP in Philadelphia, USA. He also had the privilege of working under the late SAP co-founder Klaus Tschira (1940 to 2015).

The annals of SAP state that Tom Pfister was one of the co-organizers of the first SAP user conference. Right from the start, the aim was to build networks and learn from each other. So Tom Pfister was now able to share the following from the stage in Mannheim for the 50th anniversary celebration: "And SAP wanted to hear what the customers' requirements were - user groups didn't exist yet. During a break-out session in Nice in 1991, a customer asked co-founder Klaus Tschira if a functionality couldn't be integrated into the system, Tschira replied: Okay, we'll start programming it next week."

SAP's success in recent years has always been its focus on what existing customers want. This commitment has been replaced by a new way of thinking about technologies such as cloud computing and database systems, so that the SAP existing customer is currently at the side of the road in SAP's roadmaps.