Henning kagermann sap biography of martin

Martin Metcalf started out as a structural engineer before converting to IT. Today he is CEO of UK-based Basis Technologies, a global software company founded in 1997 that has raised over $50m to help global brands including Boeing, Diageo, Honda and Sony embrace business transformation.

Prior to Basis, Metcalf was MD of software giant SAP, responsible for a region employing over 1,400 staff and over £500m in turnover.

I joined software giant SAP in 1993 and for a brief period of time my boss was Henning Kagermann — or herr doktor professor to give him his full title — as he transitioned from being CEO of Europe to managing the whole group.

He was very hands-on and I remember a meeting I had arranged with a colleague of mine and Barclays Bank and invited Henning over from Germany. The Barclays CFO asked Henning to describe his vision of the banking sector. ‘I don’t work with visions, I work with facts,’ he responded.

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It wasn’t the traditional response and he continued to articulate the challenges that banks will face over the coming years. They were very impressed.

Henning is a physicist by training, very mathematical and factual and he doesn’t try to be a charismatic, visionary leader. I also learned about understanding as much as you are capable of, together with the subject matter of your customers.

In another meeting with HMRC during a bid process, Henning came over and essentially told them, "I understand that my software doesn’t work the way you work [it didn’t do cash accounting the way central government worked], but I will get my team to change it and I know what I’m saying when I say this."

He was deeply knowledgeable about the size of task he was committed to, while the gravity in which he said it told the customer that he really meant it.

This authenticity came through in every meeting and every word he absolutely meant.

It was a very pow

The SAP Story: Evolution of SAP within the German Software Industry Timo Leimbach Fraunhofer Institute Systems and Innovation Research The success of the German company SAP and its enterprise software contradicts the widespread assumption of American dominance in the computer software industry. In this combined business and technology history of SAP, the author explores the individuals and ideas behind the concept of standardized, integrated business software and how SAP developed from a small company to a global market leader. ‘‘In fact, Germany was the only country besides the United States to have a significant player in software products.’’1 Martin Campbell-Kelly was referring, in his book on the software industry, to the German company Software AG, a company founded in Darmstadt in 1969 that had early success in the American market with its Adabas database in the 1970s. Nonetheless, it is certain that he also had the story of SAP in mind, the only non-American case study detailed in his work.2 This assessment of importance is affirmed by James Cortada, who cited Microsoft and SAP as equitable examples in his latest work of the American economy’s digitalization, and by Alfred Chandler’s book on the ‘‘electronic century,’’ in which SAP is also mentioned. The limited substance of these works concerning SAP, however, quickly becomes clear upon closer review. Little is known about SAP’s origins and its advancement to become the global leader in a crucial segment of the software market.3,4 Like in the US, German historians often face problems in researching the origins of software companies. Many companies no longer exist, having since been dissolved or acquired. SAP itself has no main inventory of historical company documents. The analysis I present here is thus based primarily on oral interviews, along with business reports, documents obtained by chance from within SAP, and contemporary magazin

In the 1990s, SAP continued to fly high in the United Kingdom. The company faced many challenges — not least managing a burgeoning headcount. And although some employees took a career detour along the way, the majority navigated their way safely back to the SAP world again.

Yet another training course is abruptly interrupted. Why? On the nearby runway at Heathrow Airport, a Concorde is preparing for take-off.  “From the windows of our training rooms, we had a clear view of Concorde taking off,” says Peter Hunt. “And it wasn’t just the tremendous noise that caused the training sessions to be paused for several minutes at a time; basically, we all just wanted to witness this magnificent event.” Hunt joined SAP as a consultant in 1995. Having previously worked at Siemens, he was initially unsure whether he had made the right decision moving from a large German company to a small German company. Now, following various jobs at other companies, he has returned to SAP for the third time and works in Strategic Partner Management.

But Hunt’s story is not unique: It was said that when people left, many of them got their trouser braces caught in the door and were pulled back to SAP again.

Peter Hunt is still proud today of SAP’s triumphant rise in the United Kingdom following the introduction of SAP R/3 and the part he played in that success.

And speaking of reaching new heights, SAP’s rapid growth meant that, in 1995, another move became inevitable. And so it was that in May of the same year, SAP UK relocated from Weybridge to Feltham, a large town in West London. “We used to joke that locations were chosen based on how difficult they were for German-speakers to pronounce,” recalls Russell Thomas, who at the time was based in Walldorf working on UK payroll.

At first, the subsidiary set up its offices in an impressive new building in New Square at Bedfont Lakes, close to Heathrow Airport, where IBM had already taken up resid