Search Spending Spree -- Visual Studio Magazine

Desmond File

Search Spending Spree

When Microsoft announced today that it would buy enterprise search firm Fast Search & Technology for a cool $1.2 billion, it signaled Microsoft's serious commitment to staving off the threat of both Google and IBM's OmniFind in the enterprise search arena.

FST will give Microsoft the ability to woo developers with a richer set of tools around enterprise search, enabling sophisticated functions like pivot searches and expanding the scope of search beyond data to people in the organization. The purchase also promises to amp up the scalability of Microsoft's enterprise search offerings. Ultimately, FST CEO John Lervik expects search to emerge as a bonafide platform that handles all search "in a unified manner."

According to Redmond insiders, FST will become the core of Microsoft's top-end enterprise search offering, running atop SharePoint Search Server. You can read Barbara Darrow's report on the purchase here.

Microsoft is well-known for buying its way into the party. What do you think of the decision to purchase FST, and what advice might you want to share with Microsoft as it forges a strategy around the new acquisition? E-mail me at [email protected].

Posted by Michael Desmond on 01/08/2008

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