SAP LeanIX has once again been positioned as a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Enterprise Architecture Tools for 2026.

This is the sixth time that SAP LeanIX has positioned as a Leader in the annual report. 

We believe this reflects our unique strength in helping enterprises breathe life into their enterprise architecture data, discover and govern their AI portfolios, and make rapid transformation a business capability 

The analyst firm positioned SAP LeanIX furthest in Completeness of Vision and highest in Ability to Execute, once again. The news is particularly relevant for business leaders as enterprise architecture tools are becoming increasingly important for AI adoption and governance.

Why enterprise architecture matter for AI

Enterprise architecture tools document up-to-date information about organizations’ application portfolios and tech stacks. Visibility on this information is essential for leveraging agentic AI and governing it to ensure return on investment.

Enterprise architects are not in the driving seat for AI governance, but with the right tools, they can provide the data chief AI officers and AI governance boards need to make rapid, informed decisions. The SAP LeanIX portfolio is able to discover, store, and provide that essential enterprise architecture intelligence. 

“Our goal is to empower our customers to confirm return on technology investment in the AI era with dynamic, enterprise architecture intelligence that helps drive business transformation,” SAP LeanIX Chief Product Officer Dominik Rose said. “Transformation never ends, but the AI revolution is the most fundamental step forward that technology has taken this century. Our business transformation solutions empower organizations to take that step in their stride with comprehensive, current EA data.”

What is the Gartner Magic Quadrant for EA Tools?

A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, offering a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors. By applying a graphical treatment and a uniform set of evaluation criteria, a Magic Quadrant helps quickly ascertain how well technology providers are executing their stated visions and how well they are performing against Gartner’s market view.

A Magic Quadrant provides a view of the four types of technology providers in any given field: 

• Challengers execute well today or may dominate a large segment, but do not demonstrate an understanding of market direction.
• Niche players focus successfully on a small segment or are unfocused and do not out-innovate or outperform others.
• Visionaries understand where the market is going or have a vision for changing market rules, but do not yet execute well.
• Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well-positioned for tomorrow.

SAP LeanIX has been positioned as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Architecture Tools for six consecutive years, and this year was positioned furthest in Completeness of Vision and highest in Ability to Execute.

For enterprise architects and senior leaders, Gartner evaluates EA Tools against real-world enterprise needs, including: 

• Capturing, structuring, analyzing, and presenting models
• Supporting change, transformation, and optimization
• Assessing and managing an evolving IT portfolio
• Managing EA knowledge and resources to address stakeholder needs
• Identifying and tracking sustainability initiatives

To see the full analysis and learn why SAP was once again listed as a Leader for EA tools, download the Gartner report here.

Neil Sheppard is a senior content marketing specialist for SAP LeanIX.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s business and technology insights organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Gartner and Magic Quadrant are trademarks of Gartner, Inc and/or its affiliates.

In this blog post, learn about our upcoming Rheinwerk Course entitled Manufacturing Execution and Analytics with SAP Digital Manufacturing from the course instructor, Lars Brittinger.

Daikin’s story is about more than just an overdue technology upgrade. The company’s end goal was anchored around the employees and end customers: How can we make day-to-day experiences smarter, faster, and more intuitive while still building for the future?

To answer this question, EY and SAP moved to one cloud ERP that enabled a unified, intelligent enterprise while reducing complexity and empowering people.

Starting point at Daikin

At the forefront of the story was the goal of being the global leader in the HVAC industry. As a result, Daikin pioneered groundbreaking technologies that revolutionized commercial AC. With a longstanding history of over 100 years of engineering, the company has grown to operate globally in more than 170 countries with over 100,000 employees. However, its journey to global recognition was peppered with growing pains.

Disconnected systems led to complexity

Years of rapid growth alongside acquisitions left the company with a legacy ERP that was fragmented, inconsistent, and lacked the standardization required to operate efficiently. Multiple disconnected systems and workflows meant that employees were dealing with a myriad of processes, all differing depending on which business unit they were working with. This increase in manual work and confusion around processes added avoidable complexity to day-to-day tasks, as employees spent more time than necessary solving for problems.

Together, EY and SAP teams worked toward an end goal by posing the question: how do we simplify operations, empower employees, and drive customer experience? Daikin’s industry is unique, with highly distributed networks and complex supply chains. Companies operating in this environment must continuously adapt to industry standards and regulations, all while delivering the reliable product experience they’re known for. Daikin turned to EY and SAP because the company needed a partnership that understood the nuances of the industry within which it operates.

Daikin’s focus from the beginning was on the people who would be impacted most by this transformation and ensuring that their everyday experience evolved into one that is simpler, consistent, and productive. With AI at the core, Daikin can look to the future and see one unified system where AI moves beyond isolated cases and becomes embedded end-to-end.

To achieve this vision, Daikin established SAP Cloud ERP as its digital core and single source of truth. Going live in just 10 months, the pilot modernized finance, logistics, procurement, and sales workflows for more than 300 frontline users, demonstrating early results of 10% improved counter efficiency and a 20% faster financial close.

EY’s industry expertise paired with SAP technology helped ensure that the people who use the technology every day no longer log-in to multiple systems and customers get the right product at the right time and price.

Employees gained single-screen experiences, faster access to information, reduced manual effort, simplified training and onboarding, and more confidence in decision-making. Dealers gained better visibility, faster onboarding experiences, and more consistent service interactions.

Journey to an Autonomous Enterprise

Now, Daikin doesn’t have to worry about which inefficiencies it will have to confront for an approaching launch.

The early results demonstrate what’s possible when AI-driven insights are paired with human-centered delivery: improved efficiency, faster financial close, better data governance, enhanced forecasting and operational decision making, and accelerated delivery using AI-assisted implementation capabilities.

This not only empowers end users but creates a scalable foundation that can grow alongside Daikin. With over 400 branches worldwide, EY and SAP created a blueprint for Daikin’s global transformation with future automation and intelligent decision-making in mind.