These are my notes and reflections from an analyst briefing on Monday, February 9th, given by Jared Spataro — Director, Enterprise Search, Microsoft. Let me say that I was impressed by the clarity of the messaging throughout the presentation. Focusing on the highlights, this piece includes many stand-alone soundbites and thought segments.

While FAST is best known for its search functions, its products are architected to serve as a data/content delivery platform. The following focus statement reflects this:

“Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices.”

“Search is the key to engaging information experiences across: Desktop, Enterprise, Online, Devices”. Note also that this list reflects the transitional history of Microsoft’s business focus.

“Turn information into business outcomes through engaging experiences:

• Visual — Help you identify patterns and discover new insights
• Conversational — Change how you interact with information, giving you better answers
• Actionable — Allow you to rapidly turn information into actions.”

Demos: Visual

Zooming in from large map of Yosemite National Park, a 2” thumbnail in high definition was magnified repeatedly to not only see the trees from the forest, but the branches as well.

Demos: Conversational

Here the focus was on content attributes and the ability to interactively leverage them to imply intent.

Using Kelly Blue Book data, a sea of very small car image thumbnails were displayed to represent all available cars, visually. Very quickly, attributes from the left column are selected to specify things like: body style, category, retail price, miles per gallon. The universe of images adjust (unrelated items disappear) as each attribute is selected. All at the RIA level, the feedback is immediate: Filtering on the fly. This dramatically changes the possibilities for interacting with content and data.

Getty Images (while what we were shown was not yet live, their home page is already very conversational): Via the search box, looked up “beach”. The results were disambiguated and presented in different perspectives (distinct “parts” across the page:

• Suggestions (tag cloud)
• Search For (drag tags as filters)
• Results (collection of visual images, thumbnails).

Moving tags to the filtering column quickly winnows the universe of possibilities. Jared noted that they are working on research where pictures are used as the attribute input, where an image could be used as a sample to find others like it. Much of this reminded me of features in Illustra in 1995, the first intranet-based platform we leveraged at MCI to create dynamic web pages from data (sans the browser capabilities available today).

Demos: Actionable

Seamless function where you don’t have to think through the attributes of the process in order to engage it.

Here the opportunity and value was demonstrated via the massive need for archiving images of newspaper pages. I see this as the replacement of microfilm and fische technology in libraries today. Full page thumbnails were returned with the section of the page highlighted where the relevant article is located on the page — taking the results not just to a particular page, but to the article as well — moving the individual closer to their desired goal.

Financial Times: A highly optimized FAST search results page looks like a portal with a variety of sections of focus. In the sample demonstrated, a search on “Obama” also included a graph across the top that showed the pattern of number of times Obama is mentioned in the content over time, which tracked in growth across the campaign. This offers a context of the whole of the results.

Globrix: Property search. Try this one out yourself. Note, this is not US-based. Type slowly and let the recommender show you options. Also see below the main search box there’s a selectable dropdown “Popular Searches” (in grey, so it blends into the page a bit).

Best Buy: Here the entire site is architected around search. In the main navigation, most of the dropdown selections execute a search to display the page results. The navigation and the experience is driven by search.

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In reflecting over the past year, since the acquisition, Jared said, “When we acquired FAST it had the highest satisfied customers of all of our acquisitions. In this past year, since the acquisition, we’ve done more deals than FAST has ever done in its history in a single quarter. Very excited about the results.”

Strategy

• Increasing revenue on a company website
• Decreasing costs internally
• FAST ESP as the foundation

Plans for New Portfolio

Internet Business: Search as the anchor for monetizing assets online
Products: FAST Search for Internet Business and FAST Search for SharePoint Internet Sites

Business Productivity: Bring the power of high-end search to everyone
Products: FAST Search for SharePoint, FAST search for Internal Applications

Search Server: Express – Entry-level, Free download 100K (see banner)

FAST Search for SharePoint will include all of FAST ESP and SharePoint interoperatility (to be extended with capabilities like Social Computing, ECM, Business Intelligence and Collaboration).

The overriding philosophy for this release is: Microsoft Simplicity and Low Total Cost of Ownership.

• Simplicity and access to network of specialists
• Amplify the impact of knowledge and expertise
• Connect with Expertise
• Improve relevance with use (tagging, rating, click-thru’s serve as a vote)
• Use search as an entry point

Licensing for the new product will be similar to the current model: Queries per second, Data volume, and Permitted purpose.  However for existing SharePoint customers if you already have an Enterprise CAL agreement, you have everything other than the per server fee for the FAST instances. In this way customers get credit for their existing SharePoint investment.

While FAST Search for SharePoint will not be available until the next generally available release of Microsoft Office, current Enterprise CAL customers can leverage the pricing model to acquire the current ESP for SharePoint. There will not be a technical migration path in the transition to the final product. Effectively there is a licensing transition path, but not a technical transition path. ESP is not covered by existing software assurance agreements.

Web 1.0 gave us segmented capabilities: portals, search, content management. There is a need to combine these capabilities seamlessly — to avoid the need for extensive integration. Microsoft is placing a premium and pressures on interoperability across all product offerings. With SharePoint as a platform to build business productivity applications IT will begin to recognize and leverage the power and critical contribution search can provide to enterprises.

Conversely, there is much being done to get this capability in the hands of more people for a lower pricepoint, opening the way to move into smaller markets. In doing so Microsoft can grow their partner ecosystem further and make more customers successful. With these changes, search becomes new a ‘cottage industry’ for solutions.