Microsoft’s purchase of the Norwegian enterprise search company, Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) raised a lot eye brows this week. I’ve encountered FAST on past vendor evaluations and must say Microsoft landed a strong enterprise search product.

A first glance, many see this deal as Microsoft’s continued battle with Google for search dominance. And in an interview with Zdnet’s Donna Bogatin, Group Product Manager for MOSS Jared Spataro confirms that "Sometimes it takes a lot to wake a sleeping giant.  But when he finally stirs, you’d better be ready for a fight."

However, I think the FAST purchase is just as or more important to Microsoft’s enterprise content management offering—MS SharePoint.  Don’t be naive, SharePoint is a real competitor in the ECM industry. Microsoft’s already proven that point when they announced sales of SharePoint Server generated revenue of more than $800 million in the fiscal year 2007-- a growth rate of more than 35 percent over fiscal year 2006.

The FAST acquisition is a coup. Companies have massive amounts of information and its just as important to quickly find that information as it is to manage information. Microsoft expressed their understanding of this when they released Search Server Express 2008. Kirk Koenigsbauer, general manager of the SharePoint Business Group said ”Information workers waste as much as 9.5 hours each week on searches that don’t turn up the right information, which can add up to millions of dollars in lost productivity every year. ”

Many companies are already using SharePoint by default since its included free as a  built-in component of Windows Server 2003.  Now add the power of FAST’s search platform, and definitely the “giant” is ready for a battle.

Posted by Marvin Pyles on 01/10  •  Add to My Favorites •  Email Entry
ECM, WCM, Portals • Search & Taxonomy •  Comments (0) • Permalink 
 
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