Microsoft Searches for Enterprise Advantage
Norway has always been a country of searchers:
Edvard
Munch searching in his expressionist art for some outlet for his anxiety,
energy companies searching for oil in Norway's fossil-rich waters,
Henrik
Ibsen searching for hidden truth in the rigid morals of Victorian society...
Oh, you thought this newsletter was all football references and pop-culture
quotes, didn't you? Well, think again -- we have patches on the sleeves of our
tweed jackets today. And note that somehow a site dedicated to the art of Munch
has a link labeled "Fun Stuff." Yes, Munch is always a lot of...fun.
You have to love the Internet.
Anyway, just as Norwegians have always searched for...something, Microsoft
is making a pilgrimage to Oslo in search of...well, search. Redmond is planning
to splash out $1.2
billion on Fast Search & Transfer, a provider of enterprise search based
in the capital of Norway.
Long a laggard behind Google and Yahoo in consumer search, Microsoft actually
has a shot at making an impact among enterprise info seekers. After all, most
companies already have a huge investment in Microsoft infrastructure, anyway,
so why not offer a (hopefully) pre-integrated Microsoft enterprise-search tool
to set on top of the whole thing? It makes sense, at least on the surface --
and Redmond is hoping that Fast will provide a more robust platform for developers
creating enterprise-search functionality.
Normally, $1.2 billion would be an eyebrow-raising sum, but with Microsoft
having raked in about $50 billion in its last fiscal year alone, it's not much
more than lunch money for Redmond. And given that enterprise search seems a
more open, accessible market than its consumer cousin at the moment, it might
just be money well-spent in search (see, everything ties back to the beginning)
of market share.
Do you have any experience with Microsoft enterprise search tools? What's your
take on the market? Shoot me your views at [email protected].
Posted by Lee Pender on January 09, 2008