Business software maker SAP turned 40 years old today–four decades through which the company managed to adapt to the key changes in IT, transforming into the mega-vendor of enterprise software it’s become today.  Quite notably, analytics received a big mention in an official statement from one of the company’s original founders.

“When we began in 1972, our vision was to build real-time business applications and we did so in close cooperation with our first customers,” said Hasso Plattner, co-founder of SAP and chairman of the SAP Supervisory Board. “Today, SAP continues to be the trusted innovator it was then. We are driving intellectual renewal with breakthrough innovations like the SAP HANA platform…”

SAP has some clear long-term ambitions, but its birthday does call for a bit of celebration.  The company plans to do several different things this year to acknowledge this milestone, including a charity event at the National Theater in Mannheim, Germany. Tenor Rolando Villazón and the ‘SAP symphony orchestra’ will visit the firm’s hometown to perform a concert, the proceeds of which will be donated to the World Childhood Foundation.

There are several more items on the SAP PR team’s schedule. An upcoming “Project Inspiration Pavilion” gathering is due later this month, and a digital pamphlet entitled’ SAP Milestones’ will be published this week.

The BI provider also took the opportunity to announce an internal development this morning. The SAP Government Support and Services (SAP GSS) and the Sybase Federal units have been integrated into a new unified business referred to as SAP National Security Services. This change comes in light of growing public sector spenditure on IT, including cloud and more recently encompassing big data analytics.