"... it was exactly 40 years ago that you and four partners founded SAP. Today the market leader for business software is worth some $85 billion (€64 billion) on the stock market. Why is SAP the only German IT company that's a major global player? ..."
Older than Microsoft & still going. I enjoyed reading about the early days of SAP, "SAP: Inside the Secret Software Power" by Gerd Meissner ~ http://www.amazon.com/SAP-Inside-Secret-Software-Power/dp/00... The bit that surprised me was the founders, ex-IBM used their client machines. They did this for many years developing their products on-site. All the development would be off-site on paper. To start work they'd walk in with decks of cards which represented their software product. The book also described the development of ABAP ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABAP A lot of technical knowledge went into doing this. Great read.
Older than Microsoft & still going. I enjoyed reading about the early days of SAP, "SAP: Inside the Secret Software Power" by Gerd Meissner ~ http://www.amazon.com/SAP-Inside-Secret-Software-Power/dp/00... The bit that surprised me was the founders, ex-IBM used their client machines. They did this for many years developing their products on-site. All the development would be off-site on paper. To start work they'd walk in with decks of cards which represented their software product. The book also described the development of ABAP ~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABAP A lot of technical knowledge went into doing this. Great read.