Microsoft made a $1.2 billion bid on Norwegian enterprise search vendor, Fast Search and Transfer, or FAST, a company that could boost its Office product suite and compete with Google.
“Enterprise search is becoming an indispensable tool to businesses of all sizes, helping people find, use and share critical business information quickly,” Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, said in a statement. “Until now organizations have been forced to choose between powerful, high-end search technologies or more mainstream, infrastructure solutions.”
Microsoft said FAST brings complementary strengths that advance a shared vision for helping businesses deliver worker productivity and improved business results. FAST is already used by some of the world’s largest enterprises, employes a talented staff, and has gained respect for its expertise in high-end search solutions. For its part, Microsoft offers worldwide customer reach and an extensive partner network.
FAST technology will bolster Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, which combines collaboration, business intelligence, portal and content management capabilities. Beyond beefing up Microsoft’s enterprise search efforts, Redmond said its latest acquisition increases its research and development presence in Europe, augmenting existing research teams in England, Denmark and Norway.
Arild Nysaether, a partner and equity analyst at Fondsfinans ASA in Norway, isn’t surprised Microsoft targeted FAST, because the company offers attractive technology to efficiently search large and diverse enterprise databases — a capability that will become increasingly important in coming years.
“Microsoft will be much better able to serve large enterprise clients with FAST technology and be less dependent on third-party search plug-in modules for its software,” Nysaether said. “In addition, Microsoft can potentially incorporate the technology in mass-market products like Windows itself or Exchange Server.”
Despite the optimism, some analysts are pointing to the challenges of integrating FAST into SharePoint. Industry observer Stephen Arnold has tracked FAST…