Microsoft Azure Enterprise Search Gets Boost With New Integration

Sinequa has integrated its intelligent enterprise search tool with Microsoft Azure to improve how large companies find data across multiple sources.

While a new integration between Microsoft Azure and an intelligent enterprise search provider will benefit larger Azure users to start, Microsoft partners look forward to the technology eventually making its way to smaller users.

The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant’s cloud computing service now has an integration with Sinequa, a tool to simplify searches across enterprise applications no matter the source, format, language or location.

The integration is now in preview with general availability expected in July, Adrien Gabeur, Sinequa’s vice president of cloud and SaaS, told CRN.

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Luis Alvarez, CEO of Salinas, Calif.-based Microsoft partner Alvarez Technology Group, told CRN that the news for enterprise Azure users gives smaller users a look at what’s to come.

“A lot of these capabilities will eventually make their way to the SMB space where it will benefit our clients. There are already a lot of apps that provide some form of this, including Microsoft’s own Insights or daily Briefing [email], which I actually find helpful,” Alvarez said.

“As AI and machine learning improve, it will help productivity and performance at all levels,” he continued.

Matt Scherocman, president of Microsoft partner Interlink Cloud Advisors, agreed that the midmarket will benefit from greater search capabilities in Azure. “Search is so important,” said Scherocman, whose company is based in Mason, Ohio. “People spend 20-plus percent of their time trying to find data. Any tool that improves that would always be welcome.”

Sinequa is integrated with the Microsoft 365 suite, including Teams and SharePoint and can find information in Salesforce, Box, Dropbox, OpenText and other applications, not to mention databases. Sinequa for Azure integrates Azure Cognitive Services to help turn data into searchable information and provide answers to natural language queries. Gabeur said the company will continue to add new integrations within the Azure ecosystem.

The Paris-based company is among the first to provide enterprise search flexibility for public, private and hybrid cloud architectures, according to a company statement. The tool should reduce architecture costs, help adjust computing resources for various workloads and process millions of documents in hours. The tool uses Azure key vault for security management.

The news follows other investments by Microsoft to improve search with Azure, including launching a preview of Azure Cognitive Search, an AI-powered cloud search service for mobile and web app development, receiving the same capabilities powering the Bing search engine.

In March, Microsoft released a public preview of Azure Purview powered search within Synapse Studio.