Fast deal muddies Microsoft search strategy

A lot of people see Microsoft’s agreement to buy Fast as just another example of how mergers and acquisitions are leading to inevitable consolidation in enterprise software generally. I’m not so sure it’s as cut and dried as that.

Most M&A is done to fill a gap in functionality or to grab market share. The Fast deal does both but it would also appear to cut right across Microsoft’s strategy of late last year when it described a plan to develop its search capabilities by organic means with a product called Search Server 2008.

Microsoft now says it plans to integrate Fast with Search Server and SharePoint but, having just cost Redmond $1.2bn, the Fast technology is a racing certainty to be predicated.

It’s a slightly odd state of affairs as it’s only a few months since Microsoft was describing how Search Server would soon be able to compete at the top end of enterprise search but, like Newcastle United parting company with coach Sam Allardyce, one can only assume that Microsoft saw the light a little at an odd juncture.

One report suggests Microsoft also might have taken a close look at Endeca and Autonomy before deciding Fast was the pick of the bunch available. Of course, Autonomy, at perhaps twice the price of Fast, would be pricey given Microsoft’s relatively Scrooge-like attitude to acquisitions, but both of these companies will now be under more sale scrutiny than ever, of course. It will come as no surprise that the most likely buyers are IBM, Oracle and Google.

Incidentally, Fast, like Autonomy, has R&D in Cambridge. That’s Cambridge as in the great university, punting on the Cam and so on, not Cambridge, Massachusetts or some other Cambridge. In enterprise search, at least, there is a part of the tech world that remains forever England.