Profile

SAP LeanIX is an enterprise architecture management tool delivered as a Software-as-a-Service solution that provides organizations with comprehensive visibility into their IT landscapes. It implements a prescriptive meta model for documenting and analyzing applications, technology components, business capabilities, and their relationships. As a leader in the enterprise architecture tools market, it enables data-driven decision-making for technology transformations through automated discovery, collaborative maintenance, and sophisticated visualization capabilities.

Focus

LeanIX addresses the fundamental challenge of maintaining accurate understanding of complex IT landscapes amid rapid technological change. It solves persistent problems including fragmented documentation of architectural elements, manual data collection burden, and difficulty translating technical details into business insights. The solution democratizes enterprise architecture by making it accessible beyond specialized architects, automating routine documentation tasks, providing visual representations of complex relationships, and integrating with existing IT management tools to leverage data from authoritative sources.

Background

Originally founded as an independent German startup in 2012, LeanIX developed its platform to modernize enterprise architecture management through cloud delivery and collaborative approaches. The platform gained significant enterprise adoption, serving organizations including Volkswagen, Adidas, Bosch, DHL, and Santander. Following acquisition by SAP in 2023, LeanIX was fully integrated into SAP SE while maintaining its core mission of democratizing enterprise architecture. The platform continues active development under SAP's governance with substantial feature releases and strategic innovations.

Main features

Automated application portfolio discovery and management

The tool provides comprehensive inventory capabilities for all software applications regardless of type, integrating with systems like ServiceNow CMDB and GitHub Enterprise for automated discovery. Each application is documented through fact sheets capturing technical fit, business criticality, lifecycle status, costs, and relationships to business capabilities and IT components. The system implements the Gartner TIME assessment framework for systematic evaluation of applications, enabling organizations to identify rationalization opportunities and plan modernization initiatives based on objective criteria.

Business capability modeling and strategic alignment

The solution implements hierarchical business capability mapping that connects IT architecture to business strategy by documenting organizational capabilities independent of their technical implementation. Capability fact sheets organize functions from high-level strategic capabilities through detailed operational capabilities, with relationships showing supporting applications and technologies. The system includes reference capability maps for common industries and integrates with process management tools to create comprehensive views spanning from strategic capabilities through business processes to supporting technologies.

Technology risk and lifecycle management

The solution maintains detailed tracking of technology components including programming languages, frameworks, databases, and infrastructure elements, with automated discovery through integration connectors. The system maintains a reference catalog of lifecycle information for thousands of common technologies, automatically identifying risks from obsolete or unsupported components. Risk identification reports highlight applications depending on at-risk technologies, enabling prioritization of remediation efforts based on business impact and criticality ratings.