Microsoft Will Take Enterprise Search to the Next Level

Come Office 14, the next version of the Office System, Microsoft will take enterprise search to the next level by integrating FAST Search and Transfer with SharePoint Server. The evolution of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 14 comes with the natural integration of the search solutions acquired together with enterprise search developer FAST Search & Transfer in April 2009. As a result of the integration, SharePoint Server will be able to offer customers not only FAST Search and Transfer’s high-end filtering capabilities but also the user interface and navigation features.

“Enterprise search is becoming a critical tool for organizations to manage information within their firewalls and improve their bottom line,” stated Microsoft Senior Software Development Lead Arun Krishnamoorthy. “FAST’s in-depth search and filtering solutions are used by customers in media, communications, financial services and the life sciences to glean insight from internal data, drive revenue and reduce costs. (...) By combining FAST’s innovative technology with SharePoint, Microsoft aims to help more people harness the power of their information, and make enterprise search technology more affordable for businesses.”

In late 2009, early 2010, concomitantly with the availability of Office 14, Microsoft also plans to deliver what it has essentially defined as a new search server capable of adding high-end search capabilities of FAST ESP to SharePoint. And on top of FAST Search for SharePoint, the Redmond company indicated that SharePoint Enterprise Client Access License customers would be able to access ESP for SharePoint, an offer that allows companies to buy FAST Search and Transfer today and upgrade to FAST Search for SharePoint when it will be released.

FAST Senior Software Development Lead Kjartan Mikkelsen led the Oslo team that worked on integrating FAST with SharePoint, a project that debuted last spring. “We had this room full of developers drawing on whiteboards,” Mikkelsen stated. “In the midst of it all we realized that everyone, more or less, was saying the same thing. There was this collective feeling that we were doing some good work right from the start, and an understanding that we each had pieces of software that worked very well together.”