FAST and Microsoft tie the knot: It's official

On  Friday April 25 it became official: FAST is now a fully owned subsidiary of Microsoft.

As Hadley Reynolds writes, FAST is now officially part of the now-somewhat-larger Microsoft Enterprise Search Group (MESG). FAST is now officially "FAST, A Microsoft® Subsidiary". Both Hadley and Microsoft's Kirk Koenigsbauer stress that FAST employees and customers have little to worry about: Microsoft intends to continue to support FAST products on Windows, Linux and Unix as they today.

As we've speculated, this is just another in the continuing consolidation in enterprise search. What's curious now is trying to figure out what name is big enough for Mike Lynch and his board to be willing to be acquired by anytime soon: SAP? Oracle? Google? And will Endeca decide it needs to be part of a larger player? SAP has already invested in them, and their technology seems to fit nicely with Oracle. Stay tuned