MS Bids $1.2B To Buy Norwegian Search Company

http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/ROC.20080108.2008-01-08T133446Z_01_L08643721_RTRIDST_0_BUSINESS-FAST-MICROSOFT-COL/GIStory/

by kirubakaran • 19 years ago

10 8 19 years ago

globeinvestor.com

ntoshev2• 19 years ago

What is "enterprise internet search"?

tx• 19 years ago

I do not believe the article mentioned internet, but enterprise search is a big problem to solve. It is estimated that only about 20% of useful corporate data is stored in appropriate formats, i.e. databases. The rest is spread across thousands employee computers in form of word documents, text files, html files, PDFs, etc.

I have not heard of this norvegian company, but I have heard of startups tackling the problem of distributed search across "clowds" of enterprise PCs: each computer is running an agent and listens to a server for commands. A typical use case: a company is being sued over something, so a management may issue a command of searching for lawsuit-related keywords on ALL computers (laptops included) of all employees. The results can be collected, analyzed and even remotely deleted on all PCs.

ntoshev2• 19 years ago

The article did mention internet and that got me confused. Thanks. Here is the company site for reference: http://www.fastsearch.com/

mooneater2• 19 years ago

MS desperately needs an internal search tool for their own enterprise info. You simply cant find anything on their intranet, its shocking. This is made worse by constant employee churn and re-orgs.

It would literally be worth the price to MS if all Fast did was help MS get its act together internally!

kirubakaran• 19 years ago

Instead of a $1,200,000,000 solution for that issue, here is a $50,000 solution for them that is even better! :-)

http://www.googlestore.com/appliance/product.asp?catid=2

$50K version indexes one million documents.

marvin• 19 years ago

You're forgetting that in this dimension, Steve Ballmer has his board brainwashed: You don't use an iPod, and you don't use Google.

mooneater2• 18 years ago

I literally suggested it to my mgr. The response was dead silence =)

qvtqht• 19 years ago

I think everyone here has heard of FAST...

MS Bids $1.2B To Buy Norwegian Search Company

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