SAP R/3
SAP R/3 is the former name of the enterprise resource planning software produced by the German corporation SAP AG (now SAP SE). It is an enterprise-wide information system designed to coordinate all the resources, information, and activities needed to complete business processes such as order fulfillment, billing, human resource management, and production planning.
The current successor software to SAP R/3 is known as SAP ERP.
History of SAP R/3
Earlier versions
The first version of SAP's flagship enterprise software was a financial accounting system named R/1. This was replaced by R/2 at the end of the 1970s. SAP R/2 was a mainframe-based business application software suite that was very successful in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was particularly popular with large multinational European companies who required soft-real-time business applications, with built-in multi-currency and multi-language capabilities.
R/3
With the advent of distributed client–server computing SAP AG brought out a client–server version of the software called SAP R/3 (the "R" was for "Real-time data processing" and "3" was for "3-tier": 1) database, 2) application server, and 3) client (SAPgui)). This new architecture is compatible with multiple platforms and operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows or UNIX. This opened up SAP to a whole new customer base.