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1.SAP was founded in 1972 by five IBM engineers who acquired an early version of the software from Big Blue in exchange for 8 percent of founding stock given to IBM.
2.SAP is the fourth largest software company in the world.
3.12 million users utilize SAP software each day.
4.SAP software is found at 140,000 installations within 120 countries around the world.
5.Analyst reports estimate that as many as two-thirds of SAP CRM licenses are lying idle.
6.Co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe have dissed competitor Oracle for its aggressive acquisition growth strategy.
7.But SAP wasn't too caught up in the talk of organic growth to break out its wallet to purchase Sybase last year for $5.8 billion.
8.And not all of SAP's recent growth before Sybase has come strictly organically. In October 2007 SAP paid $6.8 billion for business intelligence vendor Business Objects.
9.SAP employs over 53,000 workers worldwide.
10.Co-CEOs McDermott and Snabe were planted in their positions in February 2010 after a disastrous run by former CEO Leo Apotheker was cut short after Apotheker alienated many longstanding SAP customers.
11.Much of the furor came in the wake of Apotheker's decision to jack up the cost of SAP's maintenance contracts in 2008.
12.Customer backlash and a year-over-year dip of 9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 caused SAP leadership to change their tune.
13.The about face on maintenance contract pricing announced in January 2010 brought back the standard support package for 18 percent of annual license fees.
14.SAP also froze SAP Enterprise Support contract prices for 2010.
15.A month later, Apotheker got the boot.
16.The strategy, combined with economic recovery, boosted SAP's 2010 revenues by 13 percent.
17.Unfortunately, those promising numbers for 2010 are a tempered by a $1.3 billion ruling against the company in November 2010 made by a jury who heard a suit brought by bitter rival Oracle.
18.Oracle claimed SAP used the login credentials of former Oracle customers to gather proprietary information including patches and support documents in order to streamline SAP support of the poached customers.
19.In January SAP announced the appointment of Eric Duffaut as president of global ecosystem and channels, putting all of the company's channel operations under a single executive for the very first time.
20.The channel makes up about 20 percent of SAP North America sales, but executives hope with new changes to its channel strategy and partner program it can pump that to 40 percent in the coming years.
21.SAP promised partners in February that it plans to sell to small to medium enterprises 100 percent through the channel by 2012.
22.In particular, the company noted that it wants channel partners to push its Business One and Business ByDesign products.
23.At its partner summit recently, SAP said it will drop its mandate for partners to pay 50 percent of software license purchases up front.
24.It also installed a comp-neutral compensation model for its sales reps to rid itself of channel conflict.
25.The company also promised to spend 10 percent of 2011 channel sales on channel marketing. It said it will unveil new marketing services for partners sometime in second quarter.
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