[1] In 1972, Plattner and four colleagues left IBM to launch SAP,[1][3] where he eventually served as co-chief executive (together with Henning Kagermann) from 1998.

She finished the race in 6 days, 16 hours, 4 minutes, and 11 seconds to win "the Barn Door" trophy, a slab of carved koa wood traditionally awarded to the monohull with the fastest elapsed time.

In 2013, he bought out two of the partners in SJS&E, and began serving as the Sharks' representative on the National Hockey League's board of governors.

Plattner's donation of €6 million 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 2003 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 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 Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, an organisation co-founded by former South African president Nelson Mandela.

[22][23] Plattner contributed more than €20 million which enabled reconstruction of the historic exterior of the Stadtschloss in Potsdam, which had damaged during World War II and demolished in 1959.

[25] Plattner also helped in the establishment of the Museum Barberini, devoted to his holdings of modern and Impressionist art, as well as artists active in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR).

[27][28] In 2022, he opened Das Minsk [de], another private museum in Potsdam, which focuses on East German artists who were active after the fall of the Berlin wall.

"[32] According to the Chancellor, Plattner created an international corporation proving "that German companies can be at the top of the technological hierarchy worldwide".

In an interview in August 2004, 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".