Microsoft: One More Search System
March 9, 2009
TechCrunch’s information technology edition reported here that Microsoft has inked a deal with ZoomInfo.com. You can read the story “ZoomInfo Scores Deal With Microsoft To Integrate Search Into CRM” here. ZoomInfo’s technology extracts information and generates information about people and companies. The TechCrunch description of ZoomInfo is here. ZoomInfo is a business search system and content generation engine. The resulting data makes ZoomInfo.com an excellent example of a vertical search engine.
What I found interesting about this tie up was:
- The deal is an admission that Microsoft’s CRM products lack a search and retrieval system that meets the needs of Dynamics’ users. I have been critical of the search functions provided with Dynamics and this deal certifies the validity of my analysis.
- Microsoft’s own technology is capable with love and attention of delivering ZoomInfo functionality. The fact that Microsoft’s own engineers cannot use Microsoft scripting tools, content access, and data management tools to perform ZoomInfo.com’s functions tells me quite a bit about the utility of those scripting tools, Microsoft’s data management, and the difficulty of creating a commercial grade solution with those products.
- The deal makes evident that Microsoft’s existing search technology such as Fast ESP cannot deliver the type of mash ups that customers want. Fast ESP demonstrates its Market Track report generation system yet Microsoft itself has elected to use a third party solution. After spending $1.2 billion for Fast Search & Transfer, this bypassing of Fast ESP illuminates what I see as some of the cracks in Microsoft’s existing search products.
Maybe this type of deal won’t make waves in big ponds. But here in the mine run off pond, the ZoomInfo.com tie up is great for ZoomInfo.com and its investors. For this addled goose, a quiet honk of satisfaction.
Stephen Arnold, March 9, 2009
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One Response to “Microsoft: One More Search System”
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Nice report, Stephen. It’s nice to know that despite MS’ overarching presence throughout the spectrum of Information Access technologies, there is still room for the rest of us to make a decent living selling software that actually delivers on what we set out to deliver.
BTW – can’t wait for MS to “simplify” the ESP backend admin functionality and the famous FDS pipeline and its confusing and unwieldy use of Python, XML and proprietary schema.
While it’s hard for most Microhardhats to say “this sucks” in Norwegian, fortunately, most Norwegians understand English.
Cheers! An extra round of Herring to go with your Chinook Mr. Balmer!