Hasso Plattner
Encyclopedia
Hasso Plattner is a cofounder of software giant SAP AG
. Today he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SAP AG.
, Germany
) is a German
entrepreneur
. He is married, has two children and lives in Schriesheim-Altenbach near Heidelberg
, Germany.
Together with Dietmar Hopp
, Claus Wellenreuther, Hans Werner Hector and Klaus Tschira
, he is one the founders of the software giant SAP AG
. He was also chairman of the board
until 2003 and is currently the chairman of the supervisory board
.
. Plattner had also received an honorary doctorate (1990) and an honorary professorship in Information Systems (1994) from the Saarland University
, Saarbrücken
. The same university named him an honorary senator in 1998.
Also in 1998, Plattner founded the Hasso Plattner Institute
http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/index.htm?L=1 for software systems engineering based at the University of Potsdam, and in Palo Alto, California
, its only source of funding being the non-profit Hasso Plattner Foundation for Software Systems Engineering. Plattner has pledged 50 million euro
s of his personal fortune over a period of 20 years. Since its foundation, Plattner's commitment to the HPI has quadrupled to over 200 million euros. He not only fully finances the HPI, but is also actively involved as a director and lecturer in Enterprise Platforms and Integration Conceptshttp://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/personen/stifter.html?L=1.
In October 2005, with a donation of 35 million USD, Plattner founded the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
at Stanford University
http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/.
Students of varying disciplines have been charged with the development of user-friendly innovations. Another of Plattner's pledges to promote science was of 10 million euros to redevelop the library at the University of Mannheim
, Germany, given in 2003.
The venture capital fund HassoPlattnerVentures, set up with a starting balance of more than 25 million euros, was founded on 1 July 2005 in the German city of Potsdam
with the goal of supporting young entrepreneurs in transforming their ideas into marketable products. As of December 2009 HPV manages 150 Million Euros and has 17 companies in its portfolio. An affiliate fund, HPV Africa, was founded in 2008 with 29 Million Euros, and has already invested in five companies. SAP co-founder Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner provides the lion’s share of this investment capital, along with InvestitionsBank of Brandenburg and CMEA Ventures.
On 28 October it was announced that Hasso Plattner took a shareholding of EUR 5 million in HC Berlin Pharma AG based on a property contract, whereby HC Berlin Pharma AG buys his 17,000 sqm building incl. the 21,000 sqm freehold in the Science Park Golm in Potsdam, next to Max Planck Institute and Fraunhofer Institute for shares and cash. The companies flagship product is ArTiMist(TM), an anti-malaria drug specially developed for children and administered as a sublingual spray.
" and inaugurated him into their Hall of Fame, which honours personalities for their promotion of economic and social development in Germany. In 2001, Time Magazine Europe ranked Mr. Plattner number one on its list of the most important and influential IT personalities.
On 21 January 2004, at a ceremony at the Hasso Plattner Institute celebrating the 60th birthday of its founder, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder
made the following comments on Plattner’s achievements: "We need more Hasso Plattners and more SAPs in order to get Germany moving again economically." According to the Chancellor, Plattner was able to create an international corporation that proved "that German companies can be at the top of the technological hierarchy worldwide". The Chancellor argued that Germany could learn a lot from the HPI.
In an interview in August 2004, the Munich
-based management consultant Roland Berger
named Hasso Plattner as one of the five Germans who have made the greatest impression on him. In the Welt am Sonntag
article Berger pointed out how Plattner founded, built up and adapted SAP to a changing market was a "master achievement".
In 2011, Plattner was estimated to be worth $6.7 billion by Forbes
, making him the 10th richest man in Germany.
's founder Larry Ellison
. Both share an unusual passion: racing transoceanic yachts around the world. The two have frequently come head-to-head, and such meetings have not been without their animosity.
Alongside sailing the high seas, Plattner is a keen golf
er. He owns the Fancourt Golf Estate, near George, in South Africa which has four Gary Player designed championship courses. The Links of Fancourt staged the 2003 Presidents Cup matches between the USA and an international team, captained by Gary Player.
Plattner is an investor in San Jose Sports & Entertainment Enterprises
, which owns the San Jose Sharks
, HP Pavilion at San Jose and other related properties.
over the years and spends some of his time living there, while participating in charitable
work. In the fight against AIDS
, he supports the universities of KwaZulu Natal and Cape Town
. His donation of six million euros for the Isombululo programme, for the prevention and treatment of HIV
/AIDS was announced at the Presidents Cup
, one of the world's leading international golf tournaments in 2003http://www.hivan.org.za/arttemp.asp?id=3655, and it is suggested that this amount will have helped 360 000 people.
In the spring of 2005, Plattner personally covered the costs of the 46664 benefit concert, which took place at on his Gary Player designed golf course, The Links of Fancourt in George which is near Cape Town
and which was broadcast globally on television. Proceeds went towards the former South African president Nelson Mandela
's fund to fight AIDS
/HIV.
Fancourt will also stage the prestigious Gary Player Invitational charity golf tournament over the next three years (2008, 2009 & 2010) to raise funds for underprivileged children.
He has also contributed 20 million Euros to the reconstruction of the Statschloss (City castle) i Potsdam, Germany that was damageged i WW2 and demolished in 1959.
SAP AG
SAP AG is a German software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software...
. Today he is Chairman of the Supervisory Board of SAP AG.
Biography
Hasso Plattner (born 21 January 1944 in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
) is a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
entrepreneur
Entrepreneur
An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.The term was originally a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to a person who is willing to...
. He is married, has two children and lives in Schriesheim-Altenbach near Heidelberg
Heidelberg
-Early history:Between 600,000 and 200,000 years ago, "Heidelberg Man" died at nearby Mauer. His jaw bone was discovered in 1907; with scientific dating, his remains were determined to be the earliest evidence of human life in Europe. In the 5th century BC, a Celtic fortress of refuge and place of...
, Germany.
Together with Dietmar Hopp
Dietmar Hopp
Dietmar Hopp is a German software entrepreneur. He was one of the founders of SAP AG in 1972 with other former IBM employees Hans Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira, Claus Wellenreuther and Hasso Plattner...
, Claus Wellenreuther, Hans Werner Hector and Klaus Tschira
Klaus Tschira
Klaus Tschira is a german entrepreneur. After gaining his physics diploma and working at IBM, he co-founded the German software giant SAP AG in 1972 in Walldorf, Germany together with Hans-Werner Hector, Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner and Claus Wellenreuther...
, he is one the founders of the software giant SAP AG
SAP AG
SAP AG is a German software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software...
. He was also chairman of the board
Board of directors
A board of directors is a body of elected or appointed members who jointly oversee the activities of a company or organization. Other names include board of governors, board of managers, board of regents, board of trustees, and board of visitors...
until 2003 and is currently the chairman of the supervisory board
Supervisory board
A supervisory board or supervisory committee, often called board of directors, is a group of individuals chosen by the stockholders of a company to promote their interests through the governance of the company and to hire and supervise the executive directors and CEO.Corporate governance varies...
.
Commitment to education
Since his retirement from SAP, Plattner has been particularly active as a benefactor in the field of technological research. Media reports have named him one of Germany's most important private sponsors of scientific research. Plattner received his honorary doctorate in 2002 and his honorary professorship in 2004 from the University of PotsdamUniversity of Potsdam
The University of Potsdam is a German university, situated across four campuses in Potsdam, Brandenburg, including the New Palace of Sanssouci and the Park Babelsberg.- Profile :...
. Plattner had also received an honorary doctorate (1990) and an honorary professorship in Information Systems (1994) from the Saarland University
Saarland University
Saarland University is a university located in Saarbrücken, the capital of the German state of Saarland, and Homburg. It was founded in 1948 in Homburg in co-operation with France and is organized in 8 faculties that cover all major fields of science...
, Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken
Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live....
. The same university named him an honorary senator in 1998.
Also in 1998, Plattner founded the Hasso Plattner Institute
Hasso Plattner Institute
The Hasso Plattner Institute ', or HPI, is a German information technology college, affiliated to the University of Potsdam and located in Potsdam-Babelsberg near Berlin. It was founded in 1998 and is the first, and still the only, entirely privately-funded college in Germany...
http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/index.htm?L=1 for software systems engineering based at the University of Potsdam, and in Palo Alto, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, its only source of funding being the non-profit Hasso Plattner Foundation for Software Systems Engineering. Plattner has pledged 50 million euro
Euro
The euro is the official currency of the eurozone: 17 of the 27 member states of the European Union. It is also the currency used by the Institutions of the European Union. The eurozone consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg,...
s of his personal fortune over a period of 20 years. Since its foundation, Plattner's commitment to the HPI has quadrupled to over 200 million euros. He not only fully finances the HPI, but is also actively involved as a director and lecturer in Enterprise Platforms and Integration Conceptshttp://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/personen/stifter.html?L=1.
In October 2005, with a donation of 35 million USD, Plattner founded the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design is a design school based in Stanford University....
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/.
Students of varying disciplines have been charged with the development of user-friendly innovations. Another of Plattner's pledges to promote science was of 10 million euros to redevelop the library at the University of Mannheim
University of Mannheim
The University of Mannheim is one of the younger German universities. It offers Bachelor, Master, and PhD degrees.The University is mainly located in Mannheim’s palace the largest baroque palace in Germany. The whole city center of Mannheim is aligned symmetrically to the palace.About 800 scholars...
, Germany, given in 2003.
The venture capital fund HassoPlattnerVentures, set up with a starting balance of more than 25 million euros, was founded on 1 July 2005 in the German city of Potsdam
Potsdam
Potsdam is the capital city of the German federal state of Brandenburg and part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. It is situated on the River Havel, southwest of Berlin city centre....
with the goal of supporting young entrepreneurs in transforming their ideas into marketable products. As of December 2009 HPV manages 150 Million Euros and has 17 companies in its portfolio. An affiliate fund, HPV Africa, was founded in 2008 with 29 Million Euros, and has already invested in five companies. SAP co-founder Prof. Dr. h.c. Hasso Plattner provides the lion’s share of this investment capital, along with InvestitionsBank of Brandenburg and CMEA Ventures.
On 28 October it was announced that Hasso Plattner took a shareholding of EUR 5 million in HC Berlin Pharma AG based on a property contract, whereby HC Berlin Pharma AG buys his 17,000 sqm building incl. the 21,000 sqm freehold in the Science Park Golm in Potsdam, next to Max Planck Institute and Fraunhofer Institute for shares and cash. The companies flagship product is ArTiMist(TM), an anti-malaria drug specially developed for children and administered as a sublingual spray.
Recognition
For his commitment to economics and science, Plattner has received a number of honours. Germany's manager magazin awarded its coveted Leadership Award for Global Integration to the "technology guruGuru
A guru is one who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom, and authority in a certain area, and who uses it to guide others . Other forms of manifestation of this principle can include parents, school teachers, non-human objects and even one's own intellectual discipline, if the...
" and inaugurated him into their Hall of Fame, which honours personalities for their promotion of economic and social development in Germany. In 2001, Time Magazine Europe ranked Mr. Plattner number one on its list of the most important and influential IT personalities.
On 21 January 2004, at a ceremony at the Hasso Plattner Institute celebrating the 60th birthday of its founder, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder is a German politician, and was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , he led a coalition government of the SPD and the Greens. Before becoming a full-time politician, he was a lawyer, and before becoming Chancellor...
made the following comments on Plattner’s achievements: "We need more Hasso Plattners and more SAPs in order to get Germany moving again economically." According to the Chancellor, Plattner was able to create an international corporation that proved "that German companies can be at the top of the technological hierarchy worldwide". The Chancellor argued that Germany could learn a lot from the HPI.
In an interview in August 2004, the Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
-based management consultant Roland Berger
Roland Berger
-References:...
named Hasso Plattner as one of the five Germans who have made the greatest impression on him. In the Welt am Sonntag
Welt am Sonntag
Welt am Sonntag is a German national Sunday newspaper published by Axel Springer AG, and established in 1948. Its head office is in Berlin, and it has local editions for Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Düsseldorf....
article Berger pointed out how Plattner founded, built up and adapted SAP to a changing market was a "master achievement".
In 2011, Plattner was estimated to be worth $6.7 billion by Forbes
Forbes
Forbes is an American publishing and media company. Its flagship publication, the Forbes magazine, is published biweekly. Its primary competitors in the national business magazine category are Fortune, which is also published biweekly, and Business Week...
, making him the 10th richest man in Germany.
Hobbies and Sports Sponsorships
Plattner has occasionally been brought into the public eye due to disputes with OracleOracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
's founder Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison
Lawrence Joseph "Larry" Ellison is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation, one of the world's leading enterprise software companies. As of 2011, he is the third wealthiest American citizen, with an estimated worth of $33 billion.- Early life :Larry Ellison was born in the...
. Both share an unusual passion: racing transoceanic yachts around the world. The two have frequently come head-to-head, and such meetings have not been without their animosity.
Alongside sailing the high seas, Plattner is a keen golf
Golf
Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....
er. He owns the Fancourt Golf Estate, near George, in South Africa which has four Gary Player designed championship courses. The Links of Fancourt staged the 2003 Presidents Cup matches between the USA and an international team, captained by Gary Player.
Plattner is an investor in San Jose Sports & Entertainment Enterprises
San Jose Sports & Entertainment Enterprises
San Jose Sports & Entertainment Enterprises is a private company based in San Jose, California which owns the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League, the Worcester Sharks of the American Hockey League, and manages the HP Pavilion arena...
, which owns the San Jose Sharks
San Jose Sharks
The San Jose Sharks are a professional ice hockey team based in San Jose, California, United States. They are members of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference of the National Hockey League...
, HP Pavilion at San Jose and other related properties.
Philanthropy
Plattner has had strong connections with South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
over the years and spends some of his time living there, while participating in charitable
Charity (practice)
The practice of charity means the voluntary giving of help to those in need who are not related to the giver.- Etymology :The word "charity" entered the English language through the Old French word "charité" which was derived from the Latin "caritas".Originally in Latin the word caritas meant...
work. In the fight against AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, he supports the universities of KwaZulu Natal and Cape Town
University of Cape Town
The University of Cape Town is a public research university located in Cape Town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. UCT was founded in 1829 as the South African College, and is the oldest university in South Africa and the second oldest extant university in Africa.-History:The roots of...
. His donation of six million euros for the Isombululo programme, for the prevention and treatment of HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
/AIDS was announced at the Presidents Cup
Presidents Cup
The Presidents Cup is a series of men's golf matches between a team representing the United States and an International Team representing the rest of the world less Europe. Europe competes against the U.S. in a similar but considerably older event, the Ryder Cup. The Presidents Cup is held biennially...
, one of the world's leading international golf tournaments in 2003http://www.hivan.org.za/arttemp.asp?id=3655, and it is suggested that this amount will have helped 360 000 people.
In the spring of 2005, Plattner personally covered the costs of the 46664 benefit concert, which took place at on his Gary Player designed golf course, The Links of Fancourt in George which is near Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
and which was broadcast globally on television. Proceeds went towards the former South African president Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and was the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before his presidency, Mandela was an anti-apartheid activist, and the leader of Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing...
's fund to fight AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
/HIV.
Fancourt will also stage the prestigious Gary Player Invitational charity golf tournament over the next three years (2008, 2009 & 2010) to raise funds for underprivileged children.
See also
- List of billionaires
He has also contributed 20 million Euros to the reconstruction of the Statschloss (City castle) i Potsdam, Germany that was damageged i WW2 and demolished in 1959.