BERLIN, June 16 — SAP's biggest customer event, Sapphire Now, got off to a rocky start yesterday as the site hosting this year's "reimagined” event, held online due to the coronavirus pandemic, crashed.

It was hardly an advertisement for Europe's most valuable tech company, whose pitch to its 440,000 customers promises seamless integration in support of a new kind of "intelligent enterprise.”

After a delay, SAP directed viewers to a link that worked on Twitter — inviting a slew of ironic comments on the microblogging platform.

"Have you tried turning it off and on again?” tweeted Steve Rumsby, an SAP solution architect at Britain's University of Warwick.

The 2,400 viewers who persisted were treated to a recorded keynote address by new CEO Christian Klein, making his first major outing, to be followed by a performance by British rock star Sting.

"We profoundly apologize for technical difficulties with this morning's premiere broadcast. Once we encountered the issues, we immediately went live on twitter and LinkedIn to provide our audiences access,” SAP said in a statement.

Sapphire Now continues all week. — Reuters