AppDirect Acquires Xendo to Power the Future of Cloud Management
March 24, 2016
AppDirect, the leader in cloud service commerce, today announced its acquisition of Xendo, the leading provider of hosted enterprise search. Xendo, which launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2014, offers cloud-based unified search across 30 different cloud and on-premise apps to allow business users to easily find content across the various cloud services they use every day. The service can be set up in minutes and integrates with organizations’ IT security infrastructure. Xendo’s customers include Netflix, Looker and Alphabet-owned Intersection.
With cloud adoption at all time highs, and with the average employee actively using 30 cloud applications per month, IT departments are aggressively attempting to address not only “shadow IT,” but also usability and interoperability to increase efficiency and collaboration across their organizations. While technologies like single sign-on allow workers to securely access multiple online services, cloud-based information still remains siloed, often leaving employees searching for documents, spreadsheets and other files within individual apps. Xendo’s turnkey enterprise search service allows users to spend less time looking for their cloud content and get more done.
Through the acquisition, Xendo will continue to operate independently but will now also be offered as a standalone app in the AppDirect Network for partners to sell to their business customers. Xendo will also be integrated into the core AppDirect platform as part of upcoming cloud management initiatives that will help businesses manage, monitor and use their cloud services more effectively with unified search capabilities.
Additionally, Xendo’s core technology will provide data and intelligent search capabilities for enterprises to enhance connections between employees and business-critical information, associations that will help employees find subject matter experts on the topics that can enable them do their jobs faster and more effectively. For example, when employees connect Xendo to Google Apps, Salesforce.com, Dropbox and other cloud applications, employees will be able to type questions such as, “Who at my company knows a lot about Big Data?” and Xendo will be able to retrieve answers based on data in connected cloud apps companywide. Xendo’s intelligent search will also become more predictive and prescriptive over time through machine learning techniques. This feature will be made available through further integrations with AppDirect’s platform later in 2016.
“AppDirect now reaches over 30 million businesses around the world through our network of service providers and value-added resellers (VARs) that offer cloud services,” said Daniel Saks, President and Co-CEO of AppDirect. “Beyond finding and buying applications, one of the biggest challenges these businesses face is how to easily search for and access information across all of their cloud services. Xendo brings a game-changing technology that addresses app and content fragmentation and helps businesses be more productive. We’re thrilled to bring the Xendo team onboard and continue our work together as we build the next generation of end-to-end cloud monetization and management solutions.”
“AppDirect started as a Xendo customer and after a few months, it became apparent that we had a remarkable opportunity to work together more closely, helping businesses use their cloud applications more effectively,” said Julian Gay, Co-founder and CEO of Xendo. “As part of the AppDirect family, we’re going to be able to leverage a huge range of cloud-based applications to provide even deeper and more extensive search capabilities.”
Xendo is AppDirect’s sixth acquisition and follows the company’s recent acquisition of premium technical support leader Radialpoint, which was announced in February.