Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Microsoft Buys FAST; Last Year It Was BI, This Year It's Search

My Burton Group colleague Guy Creese's take on the Microsoft/FAST deal; read the full post for more details and projections

That FAST would be acquired is not surprising; Bjorn Olstad, the CTO, commented in a meeting I was at last year that the infrastructure players (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle) would increasingly encroach on FAST's space. In short, FAST was well aware of the challenges ahead, and sounded like it was amenable to being acquired. What surprised me was that Microsoft bought FAST; I always thought it would be Oracle, for a variety of reasons.

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Microsoft Buys FAST; Last Year It Was BI, This Year It's Search