SAP buys Enterprise Architecture firm LeanIX

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SAP buys Enterprise Architecture firm LeanIX

SAP has announced its intention to buy the Enterprise Architecture company LeanIX from private investors. You may remember them from when they acquired the SaaS management platform Cleanshelf in 2021.

Barely a day has passed since our last SaaS management industry story (SaaS management platform Josys raises $93M). There must be something in the air…

Facilitating “AI-enabled” processes

SAP is keen to stress the AI credentials of this acquisition and how it complements its business transformation portfolio. According to the official press release, “The planned acquisition helps SAP expand its business transformation portfolio, giving customers access to the full suite of tools required for continuous business transformation and facilitating AI-enabled process optimization. LeanIX, a privately held company, has been a strategic partner of SAP and for SAP® Signavio® solutions for 10 years. Many CIOs rely on LeanIX’s offerings as part of their digital transformation with the RISE with SAP solution.”

SAP & LeanIX have been partners for some time and this page – LeanIX and SAP – Navigate your Intelligent Enterprise journey – helps show what SAP are looking to gain from this acquisition. In particular, the customer quote about LeanIX enabling a “a cost-efficient and smooth transition …to the new SAP S/4HANA” is something SAP will be keen to replicate. As the German ERP provider continues its push to move its customers from on-premises into the cloud, having native capabilities to make that easier and more cost effective will be a clear win for SAP. Whether it will be enough to make their customers more willing/able to make the switch remains to be seen.

LeanIX investors include Insight Partners, DTCP, Capnamic Ventures, Iris Capital, Goldman Sachs and Dawn Capital.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2023. Terms of the deal were not disclosed although VentureBeat suggest it was over $1 billion.

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SAP buys LeanIX: The ins and outs

LeanIX’s software-as-a-service offering enables more than 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. LeanIX has also recently launched an AI assistant that unlocks the power of generative AI for enterprise architecture management. It increases automation today and sets the foundation for an intelligent recommendation engine for IT landscape transformation in the future.

The SaaS management space is certainly hot right now. With Josys raising $93m and Zluri raising $20 million this year, and Torii having announced $50 million last year, the race is on to become the dominant player in this increasingly competitive – and highly demanded – space. As SaaS usage continues to accelerate, the need to manage it will only grow.

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