Going Fast and Skidding
July 26, 2011
Search Technologies Can Steer You to Safety, If Necessary
Last week we heard a number of rumors about layoffs and other organizational shifts at the Microsoft FAST Search units. We are not sure whether the news reported at Enterprise Search: The Business and Technology of Corporate Search was accurate.
We noted the coverage in Beyond Search here and found this section interesting: “[We] just learned that most of the FAST people we work with here in California and across the country have been laid off by Microsoft, apparently effective immediately. This is the team that was responsible for selling the FAST ESP products – FSIS and FSIA – as well as working with the Microsoft sales teams on FAST Search for SharePoint (FS4SP). ”
There’s been similar stories and rumors in the UK too. What does it all mean?
We think the talk is related to the consolidation of FAST into the Microsoft ecosystem. There’s always a reason or two to dislike change and where job losses are concerned, we all sympathize.
But here’s a broader view.
First, let’s remember that FAST is a darned good search engine. You can scale it forever, it is rock-steady in mission-critical applications and it has plenty of tweakability so you can tune it to precisely support specific business needs and applications.
Second, don’t forget that FAST, as much as any company back in the early noughties, pioneered the use of search navigators that told you exactly how many documents would be left in your results set if you clicked the navigator link. This is now established best practice, from Amazon and Ebay down to small departmental intranet applications.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, let’s not forget our search fundamentals. Just like the proverbial needle in a haystack, your chances of finding something depend largely on the size of the haystack. An awful lot of large companies are intent on using SharePoint to front their data haystacks, and although they don’t all realize it yet, they are going to need tools like FAST during the next few years.
Perhaps like you, when Microsoft bought FAST Search & Transfer a few years ago, my initial reaction was, “How much?” That said, most things are expensive in Norway, not just search engine companies and vodka.
But if the FAST technology helps a lot of large corporations to drive real ROI from SharePoint over the next few years – and I for one suspect that it will – then just like a good bottle of Christiana, the original price will come to seem reasonable once the content has been fully explored.
By co-incidence with these changes within Microsoft, , we at Search Technologies announced this week our 100th FAST Search customer for implementation services. We’ve delivered more than 25,000 consultant days of services to FAST customers since becoming FAST Worldwide Partner of the Year back in 2006.
It takes time before people appreciate what’s brewing.
Iain Fletcher, July 25, 2011
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