An entrepreneurial legend”: Hasso Plattner has been associated with the software company for over 50 years. Now he is finally quitting. The group is getting a new chief supervisor.
SAP without Hasso Plattner? Sounds strange, but it is now the case: After more than 20 years as chairman of the software company’s supervisory board, the co-founder and former board spokesman has finally given up power in the company that is his life’s work. His designated successor is former Nokia manager Pekka Ala-Pietilä, who was already a member of the control committee and is now expected to take over as its head.
SAP has developed into the most valuable German company and a world-class group, said Plattner at the general meeting. That fills him with pride, and he wants to continue to provide support and advice in the future.
Plattner is now 80 years old. He will officially be farewelled tomorrow. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is also expected in the Mannheim Arena, which is named after the company. Scholz also came to the company’s 50th birthday almost two years ago. Back then he wasn’t sparing with praise. SAP is Germany’s most successful software company and “the flagship of the German digital economy.”
Electric guitar and sailing races
Two SAP figureheads made a joint public appearance that evening – which has become increasingly rare in recent years. Arm in arm, Plattner smiled into the camera together with co-founder and patron Dietmar Hopp. The days when Plattner caused a stir by standing in front of customers with an electric guitar or competing in sailing races with the then boss of competitor Oracle, Larry Ellison, were long gone.
The two of them were happy that evening. Together with three other former IBM employees, they founded the company System Analysis Program Development – SAP for short – in 1972. Their goal was to develop standard software that would map business processes in real time. Today the group based in Walldorf is Germany’s most valuable DAX group and Europe’s largest software manufacturer. Hopp once described Plattner as the best professional companion he could imagine. Plattner’s willingness to do things differently and his creative ability to rethink technical processes were outstanding.
SAP has brought Plattner into the club of the richest Germans. The Berlin native also appeared as a patron and donated enormous sums to art and culture. In Potsdam he had the Palais Barberini, which was destroyed in the Second World War, rebuilt into a museum – at his own expense. In Brandenburg’s state capital, he founded the Hasso Plattner Institute, which focuses on computer science.
“An entrepreneurial legend”
“Hasso Plattner is an entrepreneurial legend that we often only know from the USA,” said SAP boss Christian Klein, honoring his achievements in the past. Plattner was already a brilliant programmer when IT was still in its infancy in the 1970s. “He had such a clear vision, they say, that he could punch computer programs directly from his head into the punch cards that were still common at the time.” According to Klein, Plattner is said to have always carried the punch cards from the first SAP program with him like a valuable commodity.
Klein describes Plattner as follows: “Hasso is ambitious, passionate, seeks competition, is never satisfied with the status quo, has a keen sense of the customer’s needs and is an absolute team player when it comes to implementation.”
Rethinking the processes in companies and mapping them in software in real time was a huge pioneering achievement back then, which, according to Klein, is closely linked to Plattner. “He’s full of energy and he certainly won’t be bored in the new decade of his life.”
Source: Stern
