Search Done Right

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.]

I believe that some purchasers of enterprise search are making a mistake, understandable as it may be, which they don’t make in other purchasing decisions: they go for point solutions which will prove inadequate soon after deployment.

A point solution solves an immediate, specific need. Now, what could be wrong with that??

Let’s consider point solutions in daily life that few people would find satisfactory:

• Starting work at a company that will go out of business shortly.
• Buying a thumb drive that only stores 5Mb because it will store your current PPT presentation. But it won’t store three of them.