The $250K Irony in Enterprise Search

It’s wild to watch companies spend $250,000+ annually on enterprise search solutions, chasing AI-powered document retrieval and "insight engines"—when the same outcome is now fully achievable for ~$2K/year on Azure.

With tools like Azure AI Search, OpenAI on Azure, and Semantic Kernel, a competent development team can build a robust, scalable, secure RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) solution:

• Fully hosted in your own Azure tenant

• Integrated with your identity and data boundaries

• Tuned for your domain-specific content

• And updated on your own release cadence

Yes, it takes engineering effort—but we’re not talking about building from scratch. These are modular frameworks, pre-integrated with OpenAI models, document chunking, vector search, and orchestration.

💡 If your org already runs on Azure, why not spend a fraction of that budget and own the search experience end-to-end?

The real differentiator isn’t a black-box subscription. It’s the ability to shape AI to your business, not the other way around.

#Azure #OpenAI #SemanticKernel #EnterpriseAI #FractionalCTO #TechStrategy #BuildSmart