One Win Means Google Is on the Run from Microsoft Fast
June 27, 2009
Network World’s “That Was FAST: Microsoft Wins Large Customer for Enterprise Search” underscored the problem big media has with enterprise search. Look at the headline. “large customer”. What is a large customer? How many sales have been made because one sale may mean nothing or a lot. Now consider these sentences:
In a kick at the folks in Mountain View, the company noted it turned to Microsoft after Google “was unable to fulfill Market America’s search needs.” The FAST ESP search engine allows visitors to the site to sift through Market America’s database, while returning query results in sub-second response times, said James Ridinger, CEO. Market America plans to increase the number of searchable SKUs to 50 million within the next several months. Microsoft’s acquisition of FAST was an industry stunner at the time because of the price Microsoft paid. Expensive acquisitions are not Microsoft’s usual mode of operation. FAST filled an important gap for Microsoft in that it searches structured (database) and unstructured (collaboration, text documents) data and can handle wickedly large volumes.
My thoughts upon reading this information were:
- In performance data I have experienced, “sub second” for enterprise queries is without context. How many queries per second can the system support. Fast Search can deliver but what is the cost of the system? How long did it take to tune the system? Without these data, I know that the information will be taken at face value, leaving the customer with the opportunity to confront reality after signing on the dotted line.
- Searching 50 million any things is actually not too much data in today’s environment. The notion of petascale and exascale are important. Furthermore, what is the amount of time and computing horsepower needed to update the indexes? What is the machine set up to permit simultaneous or near real time index updates? that is what users expect and few systems are able to deliver in production mode without spending significant time and resources.
- What’s “wickedly”? In my own tests I found that updating indexes and supporting modest queries put Fast Search under considerable stress. The issues could be resolved with custom engineering.
Network World, unlike the musings of this addled goose, purports to be a resource upon which information technology professionals can depend. This passage reminds me of brochureware. In my opinion, some anchor points would help me as a reader. Your mileage may vary, particularly if you accept the assertions in this write up as fungible evidence that the magic described will pull a bunny from a top hat. Just my opinion.
Stephen Arnold, June 27, 2009
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One Response to “One Win Means Google Is on the Run from Microsoft Fast”
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small correction – Market America is not enterprise search, but more like Endeca commercial web site search.
I still can not figure out why MS bought FAST