Microsoft Search and Gartner Love
October 9, 2008
One major search engine vendor told me that Gartner was the backbone of their search marketing efforts. I have been receiving news releases from energetic PR wizards reminding me that such and such vendor was in the “hot dog” category of the new Gartner “magic quadrant”. What’s new this year, according to my sources, is that the companies in the quadrant have to have $12 million in “real” revenue. My informant did not know if the companies in the quadrant had to hire Gartner to analyze a listed vendor’s technology. My hunch is that there’s no money changing hands. Gartner probably operates exactly like Consumer Reports or Good Housekeeping magazine. (See, the goose is an optimist.)
Imagine the surprised honk when I read this headline: “Gartner Pegs Microsoft as Top Enterprise Search Leader.” You can read the full story by Kurt Mackie (Redmond Channel Partner) here. For me the most significant comment in the juicy story was:
The report cited Microsoft’s strengths in information access technology, particularly noting its acquisition of Norwegian company Fast Search & Transfer. Gartner called the Fast acquisition “a major transaction with far-reaching ramifications.” The Fast solution can juggle multiple user profiles, for instance. It can “index from a variety of content sources.” Microsoft’s technology can also handle “extremely large data sets.”
You can read more about the “magic quadrant” here.
Fast Search & Transfer has not been making headlines like Autonomy in the last six months. Autonomy has been winning the PR battle. In fact, I thought Fast Search was creating Web parts and shifting to become the R&D center for search. Maybe I’m missing something, but I heard that a number of accounts such as a major European telco, a major London based newspaper, and several US companies have shifted from Fast Search to other vendors’ solutions in the last four months. But my information may be incorrect. I live in Kentucky for goodness sake.
Congratulations to Microsoft for this impressive endorsement. I deleted the information I had been gathering about the confusion regarding Fast Search’s revenues and the shelved probe into the company by Norwegian authorities. Someone told me that customers were not paying their bills. Obviously that problem is not germane to Gartner’s evaluation and rating. A happy but confused quack to Microsoft, Fast Search, and Gartner for this game changing recognition. Google, Autonomy, better get organized. Microsoft is the big dog.
Stephen Arnold, October 9, 2008
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