In early 90’s, Shai Agassi and his father, Reuven Agassi, started The QuickSoft Company. At that time, the financial software available for small and midsize businesses was dominated by DOS operating system. The biggest player of financial systems and the distributor of Apple computers in Israel joined forces to develop a financials software system for the Macintosh but they failed. In 1994, QuickSoft and Macintosh distributor join force once againEarlier time, the system called OCEK (Practitioner in English) and this is the reason that most of the Database files in SAP Business One start with O (OINV, OCRD, etc.).
Before digital license key introduced, user used a security plug (some kind dongle plug into computer) to protect and authorized the system.
In 1995 OCEK system renamed into MENAHEL. This name in Hebrew abbreviate for “Management information and accounting for businesses “. The early release of MENAHEL was available for both Macintosh and Windows operating systems. Since then every new version release are available for both systems.
That’s why the default user name to access SAP Business One is “manager” since it is originated from Menahel (Manager in English).
End of 1996, Menahel registered as a private company where 50% was held by the Agassi family, 25% by Harel Computers, and 25% by others (including 15% of the shares allocated as employee stock options).
Codebase 5 is a a weak database in term of capacity and data located on remote disk so it takes time to generate report or queries since transfer data take times from client side to remote disk back and forth. Therefore Menahel replace the database core to SQL Server which can handle multiple users efficiently and improved transaction capacity it can handle.
To ensure the product reach global market then the system renamed into TopManage. Since then, it started to be offered in other countries and successfully accepted and expand further.
TopManage is windows-based system and designed from scratch to target small businesses with little or no IT resources. It provides a integrated suite of financials, sales, customer relationship management, inventory and operations capabilities, along with embedded basic reporting. The functionalities keep expanding while simplicity still retained.
To be able to compete in SMB (Small Medium Business) system then SAP aquired TopManage Financial Systems in 2002 and the deal number was not official disclosed to public. More functionality added to the system from acquiring more S/W company such as:
-iLytix System (based in Norway) which is a reporting and budgeting function (XL Reporter) in 2005
-Praxis Software Solutions (based in Minneapolis) which is a Web-based CRM and e-commerce functions
Later on, SAP rebranded the system into SAP Business One (known as SAP B1) and intended for small and medium business (SMB)At first, SAP B1 runs on Microsoft SQL Server. As time moving, SAP developed SAP-HANA in-memory and SAP B1 can run on it. It can deployed on-premises and on cloud and also on mobile app.SAP B1 are distributed world-wide using partner network and it reaches 700 partner as of 2018. The partner network has developed more than 500 industry-specific applications complemented to SAP B1. SAP claims more than 60 thousands customer in 2018.
In Mid-2011, SAP announced SAP HANA which is an in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system developed and marketed by SAP.
End of February 2012, SAP released side-by-side SAP B1 solution which SQL version runs side by side with SAP Business One Analytics, powered by SAP HANA. And still continuing release for two version of SAP Business One until now.
