Overview of SAP History and BW-BI Evolution

Overview of SAP History and BW/BI Evolution

In this blog a short overview of SAP history and evolution of SAP BW/BI product is briefed.

In a SAP life we are full time user/developer of SAP and we have spent lot of time in understanding the components and features of SAP but in this competitive environment I don't know how many people tried to know about the history of SAP. This blog is to help those who are interested to know the history but caught with hectic schedule where they don't find time for their analysis. Here I have compiled several points as easy reckoner to know the history.SAP Enterprise Resource Planning is a product of SAP AG, which is a German based company headquartered at Walldorf. The primary objective is to develop standard application software for real-time business processing. In 1972, the SAP was founded by five former IBM employees.Dietmar Hopp, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner, Klaus E. Tschira, Claus Wellenreuther.
The SAP is an acronym of German language description, Systemanalyse und Programmentwicklung which means System Analysis and Program Development. After some time the acronym was changed as Systeme, Anwendungen und Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung which means Systems, Applications and Products in Data Processing.
In 1973, the first product SAP R/1 solution based on Mainframe was launched. In 1979, SAP launched SAP R/2 as a result of intensive examination of SAP's IBM database and dialog control system.In 1992, SAP followed the trend from mainframe (R/2) computing to client-server architectures (R/3). The development of SAP's internet strategy with mySAP.com redesigned the concept of business processes. Note: 'R' stands for real-time data processing.

SAP BW/BI history:

In 1997, the first version of SAP product for reporting, analysis and data warehousing was launched and the product was termed as "Business Warehouse Information System".

Evolution of SAP BW/BI:

BIW => Business Warehouse Information System

BW => Business Warehouse

BI => Business Intelligence.

We everyone is sticked to the incremental change of version change with enhanced features so always the name change is confusing for us.

Even several SAP BW consultant posted question to know the difference between SAP BW and SAP BI. There is no definite definition for the name change it's just like a normal version change with some addition/modification.

Still the confusion remains how to name the current product, the below SAP blog content helps in certain extent for the clarification.

In 2008, SAP used the term "Business Intelligence" to refer

Ø  SAP BusinessObjects BI solutions and also

Ø  SAP NetWeaver BI.

In order to remove confusion, the term Business Intelligence is now associated only with the solutions from the SAP BusinessObjects portfolio.

So SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence (BI) is no longer used and instead we refer by

Ø  SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse (BW)

Ø  SAP Business Explorer (BEx)

Ø  SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator (BWA)  

In order to simplify naming, since release 7.4, SAP NetWeaver Business Warehouse has been renamed to SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW)