Sinequa finds third-party marketplaces are driving the growth of hyperscale clouds

o

Sinequa, a provider of Intelligent Enterprise Search, has published its latest research on hyperscale cloud marketplaces as it launched its own Sinequa for Microsoft Azure to give organizations access to Sinequa’s self-managed Intelligent Search platform on Azure. The research gives new insights into the importance of the third-party cloud marketplaces that are offered by the hyperscale clouds. 

Although many cloud providers offer a marketplace for additional products and services, it is the marketplaces of the “big three” hyperscale clouds that are by far the largest. Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services both have over 16,000 products and services in their marketplaces, and Google Cloud offers over 4,000 products and services. Most products and services listed are offered by third parties. By comparison, Oracle Cloud Marketplace has only 281 applications and services listed on its website, and IBM Cloud advertises it has “over 170” products and services*. 

The research of enterprise cloud professionals conducted by Sinequa** found that they are drawn to the big three because of these marketplaces. 93% of respondents reported the marketplaces make the big three hyperscale clouds “more attractive as a platform”. 

On average, the research found enterprise organizations are running eight different services bought through the marketplace, and 90% of respondents plan to purchase more products or services from the marketplace. 

The research found that the most used service categories are: 

o Databases – 58% 

o Analytics – 51% 

o Storage – 51% 

o Security – 46% 

By far the top reason cited for using the marketplace was convenience: 

o It is more convenient – 70% 

o It is easy to try to new products/services – 50% 

o There is more choice – 39% 

When looking at trends, the product/service categories growing the fastest were reported as: 

o Blockchain – Companies expect to increase their use of blockchain by 112% in the future 

o Search and Information Gathering/Insights – Companies expect to increase their use of search by 43% in the future 

o AI & Machine Learning - Companies expect to increase their use of AI/ML by 24% in the future

“Companies are now very aware of the importance of supporting employees working in a hybrid digital workplace with high-performance search solutions that integrate information across multiple applications. As most enterprise-class applications are already on cloud platforms the benefits of investing in cloud-based search applications are very apparent. These cloud-based search platforms are also able to facilitate the rapid integration of acquired businesses given that M&A activity is poised to grow rapidly in 2021/2022.” said Martin White, managing director at Intranet Focus Ltd, a member of The Search Network. 

Sinequa for Azure enables digital workers to stop sifting for information across Enterprise applications and brings knowledge and insight to the users no matter the source, format, language, or location. Integrated with Microsoft 365 (Microsoft Teams, Microsoft SharePoint, etc.), Sinequa also seamlessly extracts valuable information from applications such as Salesforce, Box, Dropbox, OpenText, Documentum, file shares, databases, and other data sources, by leveraging a portfolio of over 200 out-of-the-box connectors. 

Adrien Gabeur, VP Cloud at Sinequa said “Our research has found that the large third-party marketplaces offered by the ‘big three’ clouds are not only a convenience for users but also driving the growth of these hyperscale clouds. 

“The cloud has grown beyond its original selling point of scalable infrastructure at a low price point. It is now about having all the services you need to run and grow your business, and this is thanks to the convenience of the cloud-native marketplaces. This is what cloud customers desire. 

“It is with this in mind that we launched Sinequa for Azure. It offers the most comprehensive intelligent search to extract value from Enterprise data and gain insights, combined with the convenience of being able to access from the Azure app marketplace.” 

“Companies like Sinequa add value by integrating their solutions with Microsoft Azure,” said Casey McGee, Vice President of ISV Sales at Microsoft Corp. “The optimized integration of Sinequa for Microsoft Azure allows customers to focus more on the business and less on managing servers or a variety of enterprise data silos. With Sinequa on Azure, customers will have a complete platform that tackles the growing challenge of getting the right information to the right people at the right time regardless of source, format or language”.