Why SAP Is Buying LeanIX

By Annie Baker • Sep 8, 2023

SAP SE and LeanIX GmbH recently announced that SAP has entered into an agreement to acquire LeanIX, a leader in enterprise architecture management (EAM) software. The planned deal helps SAP expand its business transformation portfolio, giving customers access to the tools required for continuous business transformation and facilitating AI-enabled process optimization.

LeanIX has been a strategic SAP and SAP Signavio solutions partner for ten years. And many CIOs rely on LeanIX’s offerings as part of their digital transformation with the RISE with SAP solution.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2023, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

With the planned deal, SAP is extending its comprehensive transformation suite to help customers navigate change more efficiently and improve their business processes permanently. And LeanIX complements the transformation capabilities of SAP Signavio solutions and will give SAP customers the unique clarity on IT landscapes they need to reap the full benefit of business transformation. The combined offering will provide a comprehensive foundation for AI-enabled process optimization.

LeanIX’s software-as-a-service offering enables over 1,000 customers globally to visualize their entire IT application landscape, uncover applications in danger of becoming obsolete, facilitate the design of a target state, and help plan new architectural road maps. And LeanIX has also recently launched an AI assistant that unlocks the power of generative AI for enterprise architecture management. Plus, it increases automation today and sets the foundation for an intelligent recommendation engine for IT landscape transformation in the future.

SAP’s new business transformation solution suite provides customers with a comprehensive view of business processes and applications, including overlaying process dependencies and mapping the impact of potential transformations on the IT landscape. And LeanIX’s IT landscape transformation capabilities, together with SAP Signavio Process Transformation Suite, RISE with SAP, and SAP Business Technology Platform, will enable SAP customers to create a culture of continuous adaptability and improvement. And LeanIX will continue to serve non-SAP landscapes.

KEY QUOTES:

“Systems and processes go hand in hand. Together with LeanIX, we want to offer a first-of-its-kind transformation suite to provide holistic support to our customers on their business transformation journeys. Building on our decades of expertise, we’ll embed generative AI to offer self-optimizing applications and processes that can help businesses achieve key goals such as maximizing cash flow while minimizing their environmental impact.”

— Christian Klein, CEO and Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE

“For more than a decade, we have pursued a relentless customer-centric approach, a commitment to superior usability and seamless ecosystem integration and have become a leader in the enterprise architecture management category. Our strategy is to empower organizations to continuously transform in a rapidly changing business environment. With an integrated, comprehensive view of IT applications and business processes we speed up modernization and reduce transformation risks for our customers, and also secure their ability to adapt to technology shifts such as cloud and AI.”

— André Christ, CEO and co-founder, LeanIX