Microsoft and Enterprise Search: Free is Good, But…

Well, well, well. Microsoft, searching for an effective enterprise search strategy, has discovered/remembered the time-tested truism, "free is good."

As reported in Network World by John Fontana on Tuesday, the company has decided to offer a free search engine for companies, Microsoft Search Server Express 2008. A preview that runs atop Windows 2003 is available for download even as you read this. By sometime in the first half of 2008, the software, and a fee-based upgrade called Microsoft Search Server 2008, should both be generally available, John wrote.

Both offerings will interoperate with/depend upon Microsoft SQL Server, and support the emerging OpenSearch specification for multivendor search solution interoperability. Once generally available, the offerings will join the search features included in Microsoft's popular SharePoint Server collaboration solution. This will create several tiers and price points for users to consider and explore, and for developers to use as foundation for their own search appliances and other offerings.

Users will likely begin by experimenting with the Express offering, then at least consider moving up to the Search Server offering of the SharePoint Server features. When and in what direction to move will depend on the volume of information to be searched and their need for features such as load balancing.

It may also depend on what other search tools and features are already in place at a company. In this regard, the OpenSearch specification could help Microsoft to "get in where it fits in" at environments where Google and/or IBM's OmniFind Yahoo! solution are already being used.

There are a lot of questions that need to be asked and answered about Microsoft's emerging, evolving enterprise search strategy. Will there be free, advertising-supported editions of its search technologies? Will other companies that leverage enterprise search facilities for business intelligence and other tasks get on board? Will Microsoft attempting to use search to generate revenues from advertising and other services be accepted by corporate users, or just cheese them off?

Perhaps the most important question of all, though, is whether and how Microsoft will balance the take-no-prisoners, my-way-or-the-highway go-to-market approach it has historically used with, say Windows against the more collegial, can't-we-all-just-get-along approach it's used with, say, Internet Explorer. (IE is perhaps not the best example of that latter approach, but it's the only one that leaps to mind at the moment.) The prospect of advertising-supported Microsoft search alternatives will only further complicate this DNA-level debate at the company.

The results, whatever they are, should be at least interesting. Meanwhile, users should definitely kick the tires on Microsoft's new search offerings. While doing so, though, they might want to remember another truism about "free" - "Free is almost never entirely free forever, especially where ‘free software' is concerned." In any case, I'd love to know what you think, so feel free to tell me by e-mailing me at michael@dortch.com.