Enterprise Search

Some interesting Enterprise search events the week of June 2nd

There are two really interesting events happening next week that might be of interest.

First, Leslie Owens of Forrester is presenting a the Forrester Wave Enterprise Search platform webinar  on Monday morning, June 2 at 8AM. There is a nominal fee, but I think you will find it interesting.

Then, Leslie and several other interesting speakers will be at a free one day seminar hosted by FAST on Wednesday the 4^th in Redwood Shores California at the Sofitel Hotel. In addition to Leslie Owens' presentation on 'Technology Populism', speakers will include Jeff Spataro of Microsoft; Hadley Reynolds of FAST; and senior IT managers from Cisco and National Instruments.  Hadley, by the way, speaks and writes on Search Centers of Excellence and other innovations in the application of enterprise search. Be sure to register for the free FAST Search event.

Is hosted / managed search behind the Microsoft FAST acquisition?

What does Microsoft the acquisition of FAST mean for the industry?

We've been sifting through the information available around the web and from our contacts in the enterprise search space, and we are beginning to see some signals come through the noise.

First, this is still an early story in the consolidation that will continue to take place over the next few years. Microsoft will operate FAST as a 'wholly owned subsidiary', which may well be a first for Microsoft - I'm not sure.  In addition, FAST seems to be heads-down on their release schedule, with some cool stuff rumored to be on the way.

In the Microsoft-FAST conference call (which will be available at that link through June 9th, 2008 - scroll to the Teleconference link), Microsoft's Jeff Raikes had little to say about how the integration would go forward, but I thought he dropped an interesting hint while answering an question from a JP Morgan analyst. He was talking about how the two technologies might fit when he said:

"Obviously, we feel one of our great strengths is that we'll bring to customers the power of on-premise software with software services; that combination can bring  customers greater capability plus we can give customers the power of choice  in terms of deployment models. So without going in greater detail which I wouldn't be able to do today ... I can just simply say that part of what we will look at ... will be to marry the strengths that we have with our software plus services with what FAST is doing in Enterprise Search."

Now, taken by itself it all sounds pretty generic. But it was his emphasis on the word "with" above - and on the parts about software as a service. Could it be Microsoft  wants FAST for the hosted/managed enterprise search solution that FAST can offer its customers? No enterprise data center; no need for in-house expertise; no pesky updates to install; no load-balancing to manage. And FAST can offer this data center service either fully hosted or remotely by connecting into the enterprise and providing only search management services.

Could Jeff be admitting that Microsoft wants to look towards more enterprise services using a hosted model - say something like his friends in Mountain View offer? Only time will tell!

It sure makes the FASTForward'08 user conference a must-see event.

Updated 2008 Enterprise Search Vendor Roundup

Jan. 10, 2008 - San Jose, CA, USA 

Microsoft announced they were acquiring FAST Search on January 8, forcing New Idea Engineering to amend our January 4th article "2008 Enterprise Search Vendors:  The new 'Fab4 ... and 1/2" (http://www.ideaeng.com/pub/entsrch/2008/number_01/article01.html). The announcement validates our original assessment and reinforces that search is mission critical for corporations, driving Microsoft to invest in a better search technology.

Some Highlights from NIE's 2008 Enterprise Search Vendor Roundup
 
Autonomy IDOL and FAST Search continue to hold the high end. K2 and Ultraseek are finally retiring.
Google's new version 5 appliance has arrived in the enterprise search mainstream.
Endeca is moving from the ecommerce side and had one of the most impressive search demos at ESS West 2007.
Lucene/ Nutch/ Solr (LNS) open source search engines continue to gain customer mindshare.
Microsoft with its acquistion moves in as Tier 1.
IBM and Oracle still not there.
 
Autonomy IDOL and FAST Search continue to hold the high end, evolving into "search platforms" that go beyond traditional drop in applications. The two leaders from earlier this decade, K2 and Ultraseek, are fading.

Google's new version 5 appliance has arrived in the enterprise search mainstream. While the new version won't satisfy every requirement, it addresses many of the earlier integration issues that had held it back. Expect to see the Google logo on a lot more enterprise portals.

Endeca has created some slick administration tools, doing very well in a head-to-head comparison with Autonomy and FAST despite their continued progress in this area.  As the importance of administration continues to increase, we are more enthusiastic about them in the Enterprise space.

Open source tools based on Lucene, including Nutch and Solr (LNS) are increasingly considered by companies, especially in niches that need to micromanage document relevancy and rating. Lucene and its derivatives are increasingly embedded in other software packages and services, to the point that many users won't even realize they're using it.

We had expected IBM to be the next entrant into the "Tier 1" lineup, based on their iPhrase acquisition. To our surprise, when we saw IBM at ESS East 2007, they were featuring one of their older engines, the OmniFind Enterprise Edition. IBM OmniFind is still not one of our new Fab 4 and an 1/2.

Dieselpoint, Intellisearch, Reccomind, ISYS, ZyLAN, Vivisimo, Siderean and Exalead have strong presences in niche markets.
 
To read the full article ... 2008 Enterprise Search Vendors: The New Fab 4 ... and 1/2. http://www.ideaeng.com/pub/entsrch/2008/number_01/article01.html

Microsoft is acquiring FAST Search for $1.2 billion

Obviously if this goes through, and we expect it will, it moves Microsoft into the Tier 1 position and creates an interesting situation for Autonomy, and to a lesser extent the Google search appliance.

Links to ZDNet, Yahoo!, Reuters -- many others online.

This continues the trend of search engine acquisitions.  Could Endeca or Autonomy be next?  If so, would Oracle be the logical choice?  Google, IBM and now Microsoft already have well established enterprise packages.  Although Oracle has its own private brand of search, so did Microsoft, but that didn't stop them.