After investing $1.23 billion to acquire Norwegian enterprise search vendor Fast Search & Transfer in January, 2008, Microsoft today has announced a significant customer for the technology. Market America, a $3 billion Internet marketing company, has implemented Microsoft’s FAST ESP to handle search for over 35 million SKUs on its Web site, marketamerica.com, the company said.
In a kick at the folks in Mountain View, the company noted it turned to Microsoft after Google "was unable to fulfill Market America’s search needs." The FAST ESP search engine allows visitors to the site to sift through Market America's database, while returning query results in sub-second response times, said James Ridinger, CEO. Market America plans to increase the number of searchable SKUs to 50 million within the next several months.
Microsoft's acquisition of FAST was an industry stunner at the time because of the price Microsoft paid. Expensive acquisitions are not Microsoft's usual mode of operation. FAST filled an important gap for Microsoft in that it searches structured (database) and unstructured (collaboration, text documents) data and can handle wickedly large volumes.
The news of Market America's implementation is Microsoft's way of fighting back against Google's latest news. Earlier this month Google launched some new models of the Google Search Appliance, that Google says can index up to 30 million documents. With Market America at 35 million documents, Microsoft gets to chalk one up for Redmond.
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MA and Microsoft FAST
I believe that Market America did make the right decision for switching to MS FAST due to the fact that Microsoft will not stay behind and just watch things happen.
Market America, an Internet Marketing & Product Brokerage specializing in One to One Marketing is MS Fast's largest customer. Can business improves for MA and all of its distributor with the Partnership with Microsoft Fast? Time will tell.
Welcome to the WORLD OF CHANGE! Technology always changes and if one company ignores the importance of Future Predictions busines implementation, then the competition will.
No one ever got fired buying Microsoft?
There is a lot of anti-Microsoft sentiment visible everywhere, but your argument above also points out the other side ... users often feel that Microsoft is the "safer" choice, although they wish the company wouldn't create complex (and expensive) licensing, would do more to cooperate with standards (instead of always striking out on its own) and would generally be easier to work with.
In Market America's case, FAST was a smart choice. The technology was applauded by analysts as being sound ... and with Microsoft owning/backing it, MA didn't need to fear that it would be investing in a startup that wouldn't be around for the long haul.
Julie Bort
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