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Adriaan Bloem

FAST and the Furious

30-May-2008

Tags: Enterprise Search, Selecting Technology, Vendor Viability & Financials, , FAST and Search 2010, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2010, SharePoint 2010

I vividly remember being terrified as a child by the movie Carrie. The closing scene -- where Carrie's hand reaches out from the grave -- left a lasting impression.

Now I'm a technology analyst, not a financial analyst, and certainly no Stephen King. But sometimes it's hard to ignore what goes on in our industry beyond the realm of ones and zeros, and when Wired reports it (or, if you prefer to read about it in Norwegian, Aftenposten), I should at least casually mention it. The central character here, FAST Search & Transfer, is not exactly dead -- just acquired, by Microsoft.

After enduring many difficulties last year, FAST's problems turned out to be more than just accounting headaches. So much so, in fact, that the Kredittilsynet (the Norwegian financial authority) found the irregularities important enough to refer the case to Økokrim.

Økokrim describes itself as "The Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime." A bit of a mouthful which I can abbreviate to "the police." In other words, it is now a criminal investigation.

Of course, it would be thrilling to continue this story by recounting past rumors about FAST, and what Microsoft did or did not know about it before they started talking about an acquisition. Followed by an interpretation of the meaningful silences in the conference call where the two companies jointly announced the deal. And to round it off, a discourse on how this will affect the future of enterprise search for Microsoft.

But in fact, I hope we've pretty much heard the last of it and can return to simply discussing the merits and demerits of the technology. So even though I have this lingering image of the last scene of "Carrie" in the back of my mind, after this short break, we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming.