Search Vendors! FAST-en Your Seatbelts
February 25, 2010
The Microsoft Fast ESP road show is going to come to a US city near you. The road show has entertained thousands in Frankfurt, Melbourne, London, and Paris. Next up is the US. The topics in Europe ranged from collaboration to social search to enterprise content management to SharePoint Web sites. Well, you get the idea. After flipping through the presentations available online if you register, the main idea is that Fast ESP “becomes the foundation” for “all enterprise search products”.
I love those categorical affirmatives. I also like to find black swans, even though I am an old goose. The description of the new system is chock full of superlatives such as “best”. With 300 companies offering search and content processing, I am hard pressed to identify one system as the “best”. Most vendors have some core competencies because “best” is one of the missteps that created the unhappy circumstances for Fast Search & Transfer prior to its sale to Microsoft. Anyone remember the October 2008 police action at the Fast Search offices in Oslo? No, I did not think so.
The idea is to focus on user experience and “go beyond the search box.” I quite like the “beyond” word as in “beyond search”. Here’s an example of the interface:
Copyright Microsoft 2010. Source is the Microsoft Web site reachable from this page http://www.fastsearch.com/l3a.aspx?m=1166&amid=15582
I don’t have many nitty-gritty technical details, but instead of burying the Fast ESP pitch in a SharePoint conference, there are these marketing-oriented traveling programs. The first US event is in Chicago on March 9; the second, in the Big Apple on March 11; and the third, San Francisco on March 16. Microsoft has invited certified partners, resellers, and those with Bill Gates tattoos to attend. What is on tap? You will learn about the new and improved Fast ESP system for SharePoint mostly. You will hear from happy, happy Fast ESP customers. You will get briefed by Microsoft’s own engineers and some invited guests.
As you know, Microsoft purchased Fast Search & Transfer in April 2008 for about $1.2 billion and change. In the 22 month interval, Fast ESP has been trimmed and slimmed to do battle with open source solutions such as Lucene, Lemur Consulting’s FLAX, and Solr. The new Microsoft Fast ESP will do battle with vendors who have moved “beyond search”, so I anticipate some references to the weaknesses of Exalead, MarkLogic, and other companies who have industrial strength solutions. There will be some happiness for Autonomy and Fabasoft Mindbreeze, two firms with solutions that carry the Microsoft seal of approval. My hunch is that those with Windows certification, a paycheck hooked to keeping Microsoft systems alive and well, and partners will be joined by the systems folks who want to get a first hand look at a $1.2 billion search system.
The addled goose is in San Francisco the week of the event, but he returns to the goose pond before the road show pitches the left coast faithful. He will have to report on the event via second hand reports. In the meantime, he will be using his bill to root for information on these topics:
- How has set up, optimization, and customization been simplified?
- How can the system keep metadata synchronized?
- What is the time required to update the index on a 10 minute basis in an organization with 10,000 active users out of an employee pool of 150,000 and a document flow of 1,000 new or changed documents every 24 hours (excluding emails and attachments)?
- What is the method for scaling Microsoft Fast?
- What is the method for restoring / rebuilding indexes in the event of a system fault? What is the time required in a typical organizational setting with 10,000 active users and the document flow of 1,000 new or changed documents every 24 hours (excluding email and attachments)?
- What is the total cost for a system for 10,000 active users?
I think I know the license fee, based on the rumors floating in the aether. I can’t reveal the deal, but the price tag will make life tough for vendors up and down the line. If Microsoft hits a home run, my question is, “What tricks does Google have ready to roll?”
You can get the full scoop at http://www.fastsearch.com/l3a.aspx?m=1166&amid=15582.
Stephen E Arnold, February 25, 2010
No one paid me to write this. I will report writing about Microsoft to the Department of Defense. Not only was I doing work for free, the DoD people understand, love, and appreciate the Microsoft technology. Free is good I think.
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
