Microsoft’s Acquisition of Fast
Microsoft has stated that it bought Fast to become a one-stop shop for enterprise search at the high end as well as at the low/medium end (“infrastructure search”). This is a compelling $1.2B argument that high-end search is what enterprises need, contrary to previous claims about infrastructure search being good enough.
[An alternative hypothesis is that Microsoft thinks low-end search is good enough for the enterprise and will try eventually to switch over the customer base from Fast, but wanted to immediately jump-start its play into enterprise search. If so, both Microsoft and Fast customers may well be in for a surprise.]
Taking Microsoft at its word, Fast will expand its reach, but there will be no extra value that enterprise customers perceive, because I don’t think the acquisition will improve Fast’s product.
What will be the impact on the other high-end enterprise search vendors, which Forrester judges, besides Fast, to be Autonomy, Endeca, and Vivisimo? Maybe a competitor who is newly distracted with technology and company integration issues, and perhaps an increase in the number of OEM or channel partners who compete with Microsoft and so may not want to partner with Fast. A blogger and Documentum co-founder put it this way: “it would be prudent for FAST’s OEM customers to get off FAST fast.”
In this storm of market complexity, I think customers of enterprise search will react by seeking simple predictability: software that works well and deploys quickly and reliably, with implementation expertise available from its designer and vendor.
Tags: acquisition, enterprise search, fast search, Forrester, high-end enterprise search, Microsoft, oem customers
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