SAP exists because IBM said no, and 24 hours later two men quit.
Dietmar Hopp was IBM’s free consultant to a nylon plant, and he pulled Hasso Plattner in. They built what Plattner calls the first real-time online sales system. IBM would not make it a product, then refused to let them run their own group, so they walked. Owning no computer, they founded SAP in 1972 and wrote its first version inside their customer’s computer room.
SAP on Brandseum