Microsoft FAST and the Solr Wind: A Trend or Sun Spot Consequence
September 9, 2010
I have to be blunt. I find that LinkedIn’s enterprise search group is a service I rarely visit. I responded to one LinkedIn person who wanted advice on creating an enterprise search system from scratch. It seems my observation that the idea was not too good hurt the person’s feelings. I got an impassioned personal email wanting to know why I was so negative. Right. Negative on coding an enterprise search system from scratch. Maybe this was a great idea when STAIRS III, InQuire, and BRS ruled the roost. Not such a great idea today.
I was delighted to read a thread about moving from Microsoft Fast to Solr. The information was interesting, but I can locate vendors with a Google or Bing search. A closer look at the responses provided me with some insight into a potentially interesting “solar wind” metaphor.
Icarus and all that. Source: http://www.mentera.org/2007/01/12/flight-of-icarus/comment-page-1/
I have no idea if you can access this thread, but I will include the link that worked for me. Here you go: Link to Fast to Solr discussion. If it doesn’t work, join LinkedIn and poke around.
The suggestions for integrators who can shift information assets from Microsoft Fast to Solr included:
- Cominvent. This is a company with which I am not familiar.Lucid Imagination. This is the outfit who has me working for T shirts on the Lucene Revolution Conference, October 7-8, 2010, in Boston.
- ESR Technologies. This is a company with which I am not familiar. (The logo reminded me of Digital Reasoning, another content processing firm working on a more advanced approach to digital information.)
- Findwise (linked from Findabilityblog.se). This is a company with which I am not familiar.New Idea Engineering. This is an outfit with whom I collaborated on an open source and shareware search utility software directory and which I have tapped for some special project work.
- Search Technologies. This is an outfit that participated in my enterprise search podcast for ETM recently.
Not mentioned were Comperio, which has some former Fast Search & Transfer staff, including Bjorn Laukli with whom I worked on the Fast implementation for the index of the US Federal government and Adhere Solutions, a company run by my son who worked with Bjorn and me on the FirstGov.gov project (now USA.gov which currently taps open source search technology). Charlie Hull at Lemur/FLAX can handle this type of work as well, but as his wont, he was low key and not quite the aggressive marketer some LinkedIn folks emulate.
Here are my observations:
- The sheet number of comments of substance indicate that there must be something happening in the world of Microsoft Fast. I am not sure that a single LinkedIn thread is going to qualify as PhD research, but lots of voices indicate that there seems to be a “Solr” wind blowing.
- The details in the posts make clear that some folks are rooting around in the basement of Microsoft Fast to allow these individuals to flee from a system that is both old and complex. The fact that Microsoft has its hands full with a range of business challenges in the enterprise sector may be distracting some clients from the Microsoft agenda. These clients are the ones fanning the Solr wind.
- A big problem could manifest itself for the for fee Fast search snap ins. There are quite a few companies which have invested heavily and bet big stacks of chips on Microsoft’s doing business as usual in search. Even Microsoft’s sluggish product management set up will have to take action if the Solr wind continues to blow. Microsoft does knee jerks really well. My hunch is that Microsoft will lock down migrations and that could put some of the SharePoint search commercial vendors at risk. I would love to list these outfits, but my legal eagles remind me that some soon-to-be-crushed companies get frisky when an addled goose reveals that life could change and abruptly.
My take: The LinkedIn post may be the first visible impact of the Solr wind. If I am right, the enterprise search sector, SharePoint, Fast, and the azurini who make their living explaining Microsoft may have an exciting 2011. And Solr? I am not sure the “community” gets particularly excited if Lucene/Solr fry those who venture to close to the Solr effulgence.
Stephen E Arnold, September 9, 2010
Freebie but I suppose I can trade this write up for another lousy T shirt.
Comments
3 Responses to “Microsoft FAST and the Solr Wind: A Trend or Sun Spot Consequence”
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I certainly wouldn’t say it’s the *first* visible impact of the Solr wind. Some of us have been replacing expensive proprietary solutions like Fast and Endeca with Solr for several years now.
I agree this isn’t the first visible impact.
My second Solr job was replacing a Verity search system with Solr. That was 3 or 4 years ago I think.
I used Lucene in 2001 (there was no Solr back then) at a startup that must have paid a nice chunk of money for those dust-covered Verity boxes of CDs/manuals that I kept seeing in their server room.
I’d guest that the *majority* of organizations that buy FAST have people who are either FOSS-averse or don’t have anyone with enough information/knowledge about FOSS and enough decision making power to pick something that’s cheaper+better or … to each their own!