Tabnine reaches enterprises with AI coding assistant on Google Cloud Marketplace

The rise of AI is impacting many professions. New, lucrative categories of work are being created, enabling well-positioned entrepreneurs to make their fortunes in a modern-day Gold Rush. Some will feel the need to change careers in the wake of AI. Others will see their fields forever transformed by the efficiency-enhancing technology, including the very developers who made AI possible. Fortunate coders already benefit from AI in their never-ending quest to improve the binary infrastructure that makes our everyday lives more convenient and enriching.

“We have over one million developers who use the Tabnine generative AI coding assistant, and they write 2% of the world’s code every month,” says Brandon Jung, VP of Ecosystem and Business Development at Tabnine. “The tool brings best practices and consistency to the boilerplate code that every developer writes, speeding up that process by understanding what you’re writing. Tabnine completes between 25% to 35% of your code, which translates to a mid-teens percentage productivity improvement.”

Business Challenge

Many product-led growth (PLG) companies focus on delighting individual users. As a PLG company, Tabnine concentrates on helping individual code developers become more efficient and productive with their generative AI coding assistant. 

“Tabnine originally emphasized a PLG strategy, which initially resulted in half-a-million-plus developers,” says Jung. “They’re the happiest developers in all of the IDEs. We’re proud that Tabnine continues to be their most loved generative AI coding solution, but we realize we need to ship to enterprises, too.” 

To get into enterprises, Jung concluded that Tabnine needed a presence in cloud marketplaces where DevOps Managers and Procurement Managers were likely to purchase enterprise licenses. The challenge for Jung was that, as a small technology startup, Tabnine didn’t have the bandwidth to integrate their generative AI coding assistant directly into the marketplaces. His code developers were busy delivering new features to make customers even happier. Jung realized Tabnine needed a marketplace integration solution.

Solution

Focused on getting into application marketplaces, Jung knew that the Google Cloud Marketplace was a significant opportunity. With its reputation for being a developer-friendly platform, the Google Cloud Marketplace offered a showcase for Tabnine to put its generative AI tool in front of influencers within enterprises.

“For PLG customers, we have set it up where you can go through Stripe, buy Tabnine, deploy it, and add people to your team,” says Jung. “However, two years ago, the market shifted from a developer-centric product bought by individual developers to one where enterprises started looking at it. When you’re trying to sell and implement an enterprise solution into a company, it’s much faster to do that through a marketplace and with a provider like Google Cloud.”

Keep developers coding by letting SADA do the marketplace integration

Jung needed a solution provider to take on the marketplace integration project. He couldn’t spare technical talent or the time required for an operation outside their realm of expertise. Jung needed an experienced practitioner with an active Marketplace Integration Service–someone like SADA.

I’ve got a bunch of engineers that I wanted to keep focused on our core business. Efficiently building and deploying into the Google Cloud Marketplace was something I felt was much easier for a provider who has done it many times. So I looked for a specialist that has good experience in that area, and clearly, SADA has that expertise. Specifically, I looked for a provider that has very strong relationships within the Google Cloud ecosystem, which SADA has in abundance.

Brandon Jung | VP of Ecosystem and Business Development at Tabnine

Established methodology quickens marketplace integration

Leveraging the SADA Methodology, SADA proceeded to complete the Google Cloud Marketplace integration for Tabnine by:

• Creating the marketplace listing
• Deploying order processing tools
• Setting up the partner payments process
• Submitting the marketplace listing to Google Cloud
• Obtaining pricing plan approval from Google Cloud
• Getting technical plan approval from Google Cloud
• Publishing the Google Cloud Marketplace listing
• Testing and validating the registration and order processing pages
• Implementing the revenue reporting process for private offers

“The marketplace integration work that the SADA team did was very good,” says Jung. “They were fast, knew what data they needed, and iterated quickly. SADA did a great job pushing the Tabnine marketplace listing through the Google Cloud process and getting approvals; they knew exactly who could expedite things. Our turnaround time was great. Whereas it typically would’ve taken eight to ten weeks, SADA turned it around in under four weeks. For time to value, SADA absolutely delivered on what we needed.”

Impact

As a result of working with SADA on their Google Cloud Marketplace listing, Tabnine went live in under four weeks versus the typical eight to ten weeks–a 50%+ improvement in time to value. 

“The entire marketplace integration engagement was extremely efficient and very professional,” says Jung.

I’m a developer, but if you don’t have a development background, SADA can guide you through the process single-handedly. The aha moment was when the Tabnine listing went live. I expected it to go live in eight weeks, and then we’re done in three-and-a-half weeks. SADA totally over-delivered on project completion speed.

Brandon Jung | VP of Ecosystem and Business Development at Tabnine

Additionally, by assigning the entire Google Cloud Marketplace integration process to SADA, Jung could focus on his top priority of keeping Tabnine developers delivering new product features. “I don’t need my engineers distracted by a marketplace integration, which is a one-off for them versus their product work. Tabnine is a smaller company laser-focused on our generative AI tool, and with SADA taking the integration work off our hands, we were able to stay focused on beating our competition.”

Go-to-market strategy as important as marketplace integration 

Just weeks after going live, Jung has already sent Tabnine customers private offers, which should close soon. Jung thinks making deals in the marketplace is only half of it. 

“After the Tabnine marketplace listing was up for three weeks, we already had a couple of deals to push through,” says Jung. “The real value of using SADA to get into the marketplace is also delivering the full Google Cloud ecosystem experience. With SADA’s go-to-market use case and tactically efficient integration service, the two pieces fit together. Other vendors can get ISVs into the marketplace, but because I wanted to go to market with someone who’s done it before, I can leverage SADA’s experience to become part of the Google Cloud ecosystem faster.”

Overall, by SADA helping get Tabnine into the Google Cloud Marketplace, they were able to:

• Decrease the time needed for integration from eight to 10 weeks to under four weeks
• Keep their developers focused on delivering product features to customers
• Speed up the process of closing two deals in the first three weeks in the marketplace