Microsoft Bakes Better Enterprise Search Into SharePointMicrosoft Bakes Better Enterprise Search Into SharePoint

Microsoft's SharePoint has become a wildly popular application, recently eclipsing $1 billion in sales in a period of 12 months. It's jam-packed with capabilities from content management to collaboration, but has been criticized as too shallow in some feature sets.

Microsoft announced plans to fill one of those gaps today by more deeply integrating into the next version of SharePoint, enterprise search technology acquired via Microsoft's purchase of Fast Search and Transfer about a year ago.

The company is also announcing a new version of a Fast search product for Websites, now called Fast Search for Internet Business, and is slashing prices for the SharePoint-embedded version of Fast enterprise search.

Previously, SharePoint had some limited search capabilities that couldn't handle nearly as many documents as more tested enterprise search products. Companies that wanted to integrate deep enterprise search functionality into SharePoint had to either buy third-party products or licenses for each employee who would be using Fast.

With Office 14, SharePoint customers who have bought Enterprise client access licenses will no longer be required to buy additional client licenses for Fast search, and instead will only have to buy however many server licenses they need for the new product called Fast Search for SharePoint.

Companies can take advantage of that deal today by purchasing Fast's flagship product, Fast ESP, under the same licensing scheme Microsoft will be offering in the future. Like with Fast Search for SharePoint, that deal applies only to those companies that have already bought enterprise client access licenses for SharePoint.

This deal is clearly a shot across the bow of competitors like Autonomy. Microsoft claims that by licensing Fast search as part of SharePoint, customers will save "well over 50%" versus other enterprise search software. However, that number assumes buyers will already be SharePoint customers.

Microsoft has not announced any equivalent price slashing for the standalone version of Fast ESP. Autonomy recently bought content management provider Interwoven, so it will be interesting to see if Autonomy follows Microsoft's lead with a discounted version of Autonomy specifically designed to work with Interwoven.

Fast Search for SharePoint will include improved features already found in Fast, such as the ability to extract concepts from data or the ability to assess relationships between different sets of data.

Microsoft won't say just when Office 14 is due, though it's expected within the next year. Select customers began testing an early version of Office 14 last month, and betas for Fast Search for SharePoint will be released along with Office 14 betas.

The company is also planning a search product specifically built for Web sites, called Fast Search for Internet Business, which will become available in beta later this year. Fast already powers the search experience on the Web sites of retailer Best Buy and the Financial Times with features like social tagging, the ability to search for related documents and more.

Microsoft says prices Fast Search for Internet Business will be determined by variables such as the number of items to be searched and by the volume of search capacity required.

Former Fast CEO John Markus Lervik left Microsoft last month, according to reports citing personal reasons. However, Microsoft says Fast executed more new deals than it ever has in the same amount of time since Microsoft acquired it.

Microsoft says its next operating system will be lighter, simpler, and faster. information takes a first look at the beta in the report Get Ready For Windows 7 and asks people whether it's living up to the initial billing. The reviews are mixed. To download the report, click here. (Registration required.)