Today, SAP LeanIX is one of the core solutions of SAP’s business transformation management offerings.
How did it develop into this strategic and important product for C-suite executives? Let’s first go back in history to understand where SAP LeanIX came from.
LeanIX was founded in 2012 by André Christ and Jörg Beyer in Bonn, Germany. Both had worked for years in a global logistics company and had built bridges between consulting, IT, and business users. A recurring pain point in their work was delayed strategic decision-making due to lack of information and documentation in the IT management discipline. Multiple consultants would spend months researching and interviewing IT and business colleagues to create an accurate and complete inventory of applications and IT infrastructure in use, only to find that by the time this information was to be used for decision making, it was already outdated. In addition, enterprise architecture back in that time was an ivory tower discipline with little connection to the business side of the company. Frameworks and tools were made for specialists and industry experts, and it was challenging to find a united language for cross-departmental exchange and decision making.
Christ and Beyer wanted to develop an easy-to-understand meta model that would facilitate IT and business communication, supported by intuitive and easy-to-use software that would encourage collaboration and exchange between the various disciplines in an organization. The goal was to develop an industry-agnostic solution that could be used anywhere in the world.
After several iterations, LeanIX, an abbreviation of Lean Information Exchange, was developed into three separate but integrated products:
In 2022, LeanIX’s partnership with SAP intensified and LeanIX became a certified SAP-endorsed app, ultimately leading to the company’s acquisition by SAP in November 2023, giving us SAP LeanIX. During the acquisition, SAP decided that SAP LeanIX would remain a software-as-a-service (SaaS) product and that the two other LeanIX software products, VSM and SMP, would be sunsetted. Core capabilities of both products have since been transferred and integrated into the SAP LeanIX enterprise architecture product. The design changed, leaving SAP LeanIX as a base product that also offered add-on products with additional capabilities:
In August 2026, André Christ, the remaining founder, decided to move on from SAP LeanIX and focus on new adventures. Dominik Rose, a longtime SAP LeanIX executive, took over the position of general manager for SAP LeanIX products.
You can find the most recent information about SAP LeanIX via the following resources:
The base product, SAP LeanIX Application Portfolio Management, is the foundation and starting point of the enterprise architecture work. This product includes the SAP LeanIX workspace provisioning and all its dimensions, for example:
The figure below shows an overview of the Inventory tab in SAP LeanIX Application Portfolio Management. In the top ribbon, you can see tabs for other capability areas, such as Dashboards, Reports, Diagrams, and More; the latter is a dropdown menu, which you can expand to see additional capabilities. This is where you will find features such as To-Dos, Surveys, Presentations, Reference Catalog, and the Extension Hub (formerly known as the SAP LeanIX store).
In addition, the following discovery capabilities are included:
The next figure shows an overview of the available integrations for various discovery capabilities in SAP LeanIX Application Portfolio Management. To navigate to this overview, click the round User button in the upper-right corner, then click Administration. In the left-hand side menu, scroll to the DISCOVERY AND INTEGRATIONS area and click Integrations. In the upper-right corner, click the blue Add Integration button. A new overview will open. On the left-hand side, you can filter the integrations based on classification such as EA Toolchain or Discovery. Every integration has either a More Information or Configure button and a link to the SAP LeanIX user documentation.
Furthermore, the following reference and integration capabilities are available:
In SAP LeanIX Application Portfolio Management, admins can configure four different reference catalogs in the Administration area. You can navigate there by clicking the round User button in the upper-right corner and then clicking Administration. As shown in the next figure, in the left-hand side menu, scroll to the DISCOVERY AND INTEGRATIONS area and click Reference Catalog. There, under the related tabs, admins can configure the Business Capability, the Application, the IT Component, and the Tech Category catalogs.
Other relevant integrations can be seen in the EA Toolchain area, as shown in this figure:
Collibra and SAP Signavio can be self-configured with the help of the user documentation. However, you need to request the Apptio integration via an SAP support ticket as customer support colleagues need to activate the integration in the backend and help with the setup.
You can always create an SAP support ticket if you have issues setting up an integration or want to discuss advanced configurations.
The SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance add-on product offers the following additional capabilities:
The following figure shows how to access the Software Bill of Materials viewer, available via the top ribbon menu’s More dropdown menu if the SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance product has been purchased.
SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance also includes new capabilities via the Inventory Tools dropdown, as shown in the next figure. The Tech Stack Discovery option via SBOM ingestion is an additional feature that reads out certain elements of an SBOM of a specific format and automatically creates an aggregated IT component to bring transparency into frameworks and libraries used in self-built software.
The next figure displays the additional ServiceNow integration option, which becomes available when purchasing the SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance product. ServiceNow is widely used software for IT service and asset management. In ServiceNow, companies manage their IT assets from the logical down to the physical instance level. In SAP LeanIX, only the logical level, the product model level, is of interest to enterprise architects. This out-of-the-box integration is very versatile. It lets you sync artifacts from ServiceNow’s configuration management database (CMDB) to SAP LeanIX and vice versa. Commonly exchanged artifacts encompass IT components, applications, business capabilities, and tech categories.
To activate the self-built software discovery option, workspace admins first must navigate to the Administration area. In the left-hand menu, select Self-Built Software Discovery under the DISCOVERY AND INTEGRATIONS section, as shown below. First, the meta model extension must be provisioned, which will be triggered by clicking the blue Provision button. After that, the GitHub Enterprise integration can be configured, or a custom continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline can be connected via API and script.
For more information, see the following resources in the SAP LeanIX user documentation:
There is one additional feature in the IT component reference catalog that becomes available when activating the SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance product: vendor lifecycle. To access this, first ensure that the Vendor Lifecycle checkbox is selected under the IT Component tab of the Reference Catalog area under the DISCOVERY AND INTEGRATIONS section, as shown.
The next figure shows what the vendor lifecycle looks like in the IT component reference catalog. The regular IT component lifecycle, which is entered by the fact sheet owner, captures the time period during which the organization plans to use the IT component. The vendor lifecycle, however, shows additional information provided by the SAP LeanIX catalog research team. It indicates whether an IT component will still receive updates from the vendor, and is therefore Active, or has reached its End of (Standard) Support.
Admins in the Administration area can select which of the predefined dashboards will be visible for SAP LeanIX workspace users. Below shows the Predefined Dashboards options for the SAP LeanIX Application Portfolio Management base product plus the Obsolescence risk management option, which is available when SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance is added.
Users can see all dashboards that are available to them in the dashboard overview, accessed by navigating to the Dashboards tab in the top ribbon. Expand the left-hand side menu by clicking the left-pointing arrow in a circle on the separator line, then select All Dashboards. As shown in the next figure, the Obsolescence risk management dashboard is available (first row of dashboards, fourth entry from the left).
The final add-on product, SAP LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning, offers the following additional capabilities:
In the following figure, the additional integrations that are available when activating the SAP LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning product are shown: Jira for Architecture and Road Map Planning and SAP Cloud ALM for managing projects. These can be found in the Administration area under the DISCOVERY AND INTEGRATIONS section in the Integrations menu item, after clicking the Add Integration button and filtering on the left-hand side for Collaboration.
When the SAP LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning product is activated, the meta model extensions and features for transformations and milestones in the initiative fact sheets are not automatically provisioned. This might change in the future, but as of the time of writing (summer 2026), admins must navigate to the Administration area, navigate to the ADVANCED SETTINGS area in the left-hand side menu, and select Optional Features and Early Access, as shown in the next figure. In the middle area, scroll to the Use Case Extensions area and click the Activate button next to Architecture Road Map Planning: Transformations & Milestones.
Once transformations are activated in the workspace, admins will find a new menu item called Transformations in the Administration area under the ADVANCED SETTINGS section. As shown in the next figure, admins can configure certain Settings, browse Predefined Transformation Types, create their own transformation templates in the Configured Transformation Types tab, or mass-update transformations in the Excel Import & Export tab.
Below displays the additional features that are available in the SAP LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning product in the top ribbon’s More dropdown menu.
What began as a response to a common frustration, strategic decisions delayed by incomplete and outdated IT documentation, has grown into a core pillar of SAP's business transformation portfolio. SAP LeanIX today gives enterprise architects a modular foundation to work from: SAP LeanIX Application Portfolio Management as the base, extended by SAP LeanIX Technology Risk and Compliance for obsolescence and tech stack transparency, and SAP LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning for transformation and milestone tracking. Knowing what each product covers, and which capabilities require activation or a support ticket, is the first step to getting real value out of your workspace.
Editor’s note: This post has been adapted from a section of the book SAP LeanIX: The Practical Guide by René de Daniel and Marianne Dahmen. René has more than two decades of experience in enterprise architecture, having worked for several years at the intersection of strategy, transformation, and technology. Marianne is a principal internal consultant for strategic projects and initiatives and part of the SAP LeanIX Product & Engineering department.
This post was originally published 8/2026.