Microsoft Buys Search Engine, Going After Google? 256
obsolete1349 writes "Microsoft has just bid 1.2 billion dollars for FAST (Fast Search And Transfer [Microsoft to use a self-recursive acronym?]), an enterprise search company. 'Microsoft can bundle FAST with its Microsoft Office SharePoint Server' with its soon-to-be-customers Comcast, Disney, Microsoft, Pfizer, and UBS."
Recursive acronym... but... (Score:1, Interesting)
Is it just me, or did they spell FSAT... er, FAST... wrong?
self-recursive acronym (Score:5, Interesting)
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/nl-nl/directx/aa937793(en-us).aspx [microsoft.com]
Q: What does XNA stand for?
A: XNA's Not Acronymed
And the rats are leaving the ship... (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, that.
Didn't someone already buy FAST? (Score:5, Interesting)
Overture bought FAST's search arm before Yahoo in turn bought Overture.
Now they grew a new arm, and are selling that one to Microsoft?
Outstanding.
Microsoft is now its own customer (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I don't get it.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That's ok... (Score:5, Interesting)
Chaos in the the Enterprise Search market (Score:3, Interesting)
This acquisition is going to mean some chaos in my industry. Full disclosure: My company, Dieselpoint, is a Fast competitor.
The enterprise search market is an industry unto itself, entirely different from web search. In this industry we sell search software for data inside a company, as opposed to general web search. In some ways, it's a much harder technical problem to solve than web search, because we deal with a much wider variety of data, security schemes, navigation rules, platforms, programming environments, etc.. Total industry size is between $1 and $2 billion, depending on how you count.
Enterprise search is interesting to larger firms like Microsoft because it touches everything in the enterprise. Everybody wants easy-to-use search for everything -- the intranet, the email archive, the content management system, the ERP system, the HR system, the CRM system, the works. It's a hard thing to do well, and the company that does it is difficult to dislodge. Being the company's internal search engine is a good strategic position to be in.
The industry is currently very fragmented, and no one has the upper hand. Fast was probably the most dominant competitor, though not the largest one. The largest one is Autonomy, but that has morphed more into a portfolio company with a lot of legacy products than a company focused on search. Fast was really the up-and-comer, and despite the financial difficulties, the one we had the hardest time selling against. Everyone else is secondary.
The acquisition means some chaos in this industry, for one major reason: Fast is no longer a viable cross-platform solution, and won't be considered for many corporate deals. There's going to be a scramble to take over the mantle.
Cross-platform capability is critical for corporate deals because, again, everybody wants to search everything. It's tough to do that if you only run on a Microsoft operating system. And while I'm sure Fast will continue to claim they'll support all platforms, who will believe them? This is Microsoft, after all. Non-Microsoft operating systems, Java, and the rest of the non-Microsoft-controlled technology will receive only short shrift in the future.
So this is really big news for our little industry.
Chris
Re:What they are going after... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What they are going after... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That's ok... (Score:3, Interesting)