as mentioned in previous posts, today i will try to give info on the very generic question 'why SAP'.
this question can be seen from many perspectives.
- from an organization's point of view which is contemplating an SAP implementation.
- from an individual's point of view who is contemplating a high salaried career in IT.
- from a lay man perspective who is trying to find the answer to the same question for quite a while now

to be frank, i myself was a category 3 some 2-3 years ago until i understood the actual reason and factors.
on googling, i could find this quite relevant information:-
(source :
7 Reasons why SAP is a Market Leader in Enterprise Resource Planning, ERP Systems)
SAP has been a market leader, if not the market leader in the enterprise resource planning, ERP systems arena for the last three decades. Although the competition is fierce with a lot of new entrants in the market place from large and small vendors over this time, SAP is still a leader in enterprise software. Here are some reasons, though they may be similar benefits of other ERP solutions in the marketplace today, explain why SAP continues to be the market leader in the enterprise applications market.
1. The first reason is simply the fact that SAP is a market leader after three decades. Customers both new and old find comfort in a long historical track record. Although there are many new vendors and robust technologies on the market from large and start-up companies (startups meaning companies fewer than 4 years old), customers and prospective buyers making decisions on an enterprise solution for their company find comfort in a company with a long track record, and for good reason. Technology decision makers have been burned many times before with going forward with newer technologies that disappeared along with the software support and software upgrades. Knowing that a technology company will be around 5 years from now is a big influencer when buying enterprise wide solutions.
2. The primary focus of SAP has been on enterprise applications for the last 30 years, the area where they hold the market leader spot today across the globe. In contrast to the other large ERP software vendors, are focused on databases as an example.
3. SAP continues to focus its ERP applications on maximizing resources and reducing costs that are customized for businesses and industries. SAP has evolved its applications to have very deep industry focused solutions.
4. SAP architecture is incredibly strong with a process-centric focus and a foundation that operates in real time communication with enterprise wide business processes that is highly flexible.
5. Lasty, SAPs strong customer base and partnership base over the last 30 years has afforded their enterprise applications to be extremely industry and business specific as they have already built and refined these industry specific solutions with real customers and real implementation carrying the knowledge base and improving their technology and application offerings each year for the last three decades.
To the customers benefit, there are more solutions available on the marketplace to choose from, and even given the increasing competitive landscape, SAP has kept their market dominance.
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coming back to the 3 categories which i made above, the reasons for first category would be clear on reading the above mentioned data.
still, on skimming and understanding, one can deduce that organizations implement SAP in their enterprises to reduce operating costs, improve efficiency, reduce man hours for their core processes and hence as a result of all these: make profits.
however, it doesn't mean that SAP is an elixir for every organisation.
there have been many failures and consequent roll backs and dissociation too.
you can google it and have a look. (i have tried it and found this link below)
10 Famous ERP Disasters, Dustups and Disappointments CIO.comfor the second category, which is one of the important category as far as the audience here is concerned, the major reasons are
- the large market share of the SAP ERP,
- hence the large number of jobs generated,
- greater onsite opportunities as enterprises implementing SAP are generally very big in size and have an almost truly global presence
- good salary as the enterprises tend to make sure that their process and work should not be compromised.
only these reasons come to my mind right now. :)
finally as far as third category is concerned, read this above faltoo gyan and keep subscribed to this thread.