The news that Microsoft has announced two new Enterprise Search products offering: ‘compelling, new choices for customers’, has been met with incredulity by some in the enterprise search market.
 
Microsoft unveiled its roadmap for enterprise search recently for both FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for Internet Business this week.
 
Alistair Handyside, CEO of Open Source Enterprise Search specialist, Simplexo, stated: “While the thought that Microsoft is offering customers choice is ludicrous, the fact of the matter is that there are already Enterprise Solutions available today that offer far more functionality and integration than what is being proposed,”
 
“It is interesting that Microsoft has chosen to announce this as part of a product roadmap strategy.  In other words this is talk about the future not the here and now.  What end users are looking for are solutions that enable them to make real-time business decisions today, not two years in the future!”
 
Alistair continued: “Microsoft is clearly continuing along the path of offering customers closed products, with very limited interoperability and collaboration,”
 
“All the research teams in the world are pointless if they continue to pursue this propriety model. All that they have done is announce that a 300 pound gorilla is ‘planning’ to enter the market and try and scare off competition,”
 
“Well it certainly is not going to work. Simplexo Enterprise Search is an Open Source Enterprise Search tool designed to work across  any platform including SharePoint and other proprietary software and integrates at a fraction of the cost of these closed solutions,”
 
The press release states: “FAST Search for SharePoint gives customers a new choice: a search server that integrates the high-end search capability of FAST ESP into SharePoint Server.”
 
“Simplexo is a pure play Open Source Enterprise Search tool, is easy to use and install. The tool is application agnostic, making it a logical, cost-effective solution for companies across all sectors who need to find information and make business decisions in real time.
 
Furthermore, Simplexo is highly secure using AES 256 encryption and maintains a central audit trail giving peace of mind to highly regulated industries. The tool is designed to search multiple data sources, simultaneously and in real time. This is the clear difference and it’s available now. Not in two years time!” concludes Alistair.