S A P stands for System, Applications and Products in Data Processing (in German, Systeme, Anwendungen, Produkte in der Datenverarbeitung). S A P is the name of the Company that have developed the SAP business system, likewise of the system.

S A P is a German international software company founded in 1972 by a couple of former IBM software designers.  During the 1980s and 1990s, the Company have experienced fantastic corporate success and growth, become a market leader in the field and have took almost 80% of the German market and significant market percentage elsewhere in Europe.

The R/3 Sytem was launched in 1992. R/3 refers to the three-tiered architecture structure use to support the software. The structure allows three-levels of client/server distributed processing:

• Front end server (user’s interaction begins here);
• Application server (system processing occurs here); and
• Database server (information storage)   

SAP R/3 Modules

• Financial Accounting (FI)
• Controlling (CO)
• Treasury (TR)
• Project Syste (PS)
• Workflow (WF)
• Industry Solutions (IS)
• Human Resources (HR)
• Plant Maintenance (PM)
• Quality Management (QM)
• Production Planning (PP)
• Material Management (MM)
• Sales and Disribution (SD)