SAP Acquisition: LeanIX Joining the ERP Giant

The pending SAP acquisition of LeanIX will help the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software provider to expand its business transformation practice.

SAP on Thursday announced its intent to buy the German enterprise architecture management (EAM) provider for an undisclosed sum. The deal will close in the fourth quarter of 2023, the companies said.

More than 1,000 businesses leverage a SaaS offering from LeanIX that helps them visualize their IT applications. It also provides an AI assistant. And those capabilities will integrate into SAP’s new business transformation suite, executives said.

SAP’s Christian Klein

“Systems and processes go hand in hand,” SAP CEO Christian Klein said. “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.”

SAP Acquisition and Existing LeanIX Partnership

LeanIX has strategically partnered with SAP and SAP Signavio for 10 years, according to a news release. SAP purchased Signavio, a German business process management software company, in 2021.

LeanIX’s André Christ

“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,” said André Christ, CEO and co-founder, LeanIX. “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.”

Eleven years prior to this SAP acquisition, Christ and Jörg Beyer founded LeanIX in 2012.

LeanIX’s partners fit into three main categories: consultants and advisors (including Accenture, Capgemeni and Wipro), store partners (including Lean42), and technology partners (including Atlassian and Lucidchart).

LeanIX will continue to serve non-SAP customers, according to the announcement.

LeanIX lists six investors on its website: Goldman Sachs, Insight Partners, DTCP, Capnamic Ventures, Iris Capitaland Dawn Capital.

SAP earlier this year announced the $12.5 billion sale of the majority stake in Silver Lake.