Microsoft to Plant a New Seed into its Garden of Search Solutions

Microsoft is getting ready to plant a new seed into its garden of search solutions aimed at enterprises. In this context, the Redmond company has announced that it has made an offer for acquisition of Fast Search & Transfer. A provider of enterprise search solutions based in Norway, Fast Search & Transfer, comes with a price tag of $1.2 billion for Microsoft. The company is prepared to pay a 42% premium to the closing share price of Fast Search & Transfer from January 4th, 2008. As of the time of the announcement, Microsoft enjoyed the support of the board of directors, as well as of shareholders accounting for 37% of outstanding shares.

"Enterprise search is becoming an indispensable tool to businesses of all sizes, helping people find, use and share critical business information quickly. Until now organizations have been forced to choose between powerful, high-end search technologies or more mainstream, infrastructure solutions. The combination of Microsoft and FAST gives customers a new choice: a single vendor with solutions that span the full range of customer needs", revealed Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division.

At this point in time, Microsoft is estimating that it will close the deal in the second half of 2008. It is obvious that Fast Search & Transfer will be melted away into the Redmond company's own enterprise-level search solutions. At the beginning of November 2007, business customers were presented with Search Server 2008 Express, delivering the search capabilities of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 as a standalone product.

"This acquisition gives FAST an exciting way to spread our cutting-edge search technologies and innovations to more and more organizations across the world. By joining Microsoft, we can benefit from the momentum behind the SharePoint business productivity platform to really empower a broader set of users through Microsoft's strong sales and marketing network. It validates FAST's momentum and leadership in enterprise search", added John Lervik, CEO of FAST.