Microsoft Has Officially Gotten FASTer!

It's now official, Microsoft has finalized it's tender offer for Fast Search & Transfer. They're pretty excited over at Microsoft these days knowing this deal is done. FAST will operate as a Microsoft subsidiary and will have a dedicated research and development center in Norway. John Markus Lervik, FAST CEO will be transitioning to the role of Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Enterprise Search. He gets to work with all the latest and greatest Microsoft search technologies like MS Search Server Express 2008, MOSS search and FAST ESP -- the end result potentially being a single enterprise search platform. The FAST product will retain it's own FAST sales, service and support teams, they'll just have a wider range of products to sell and support. Open Source enthusiasts fear not, Microsoft is still very pro-proprietary. According to Kirk Koenigsbauer, General Manager for the SharePoint Business Group, "We’re making a pragmatic decision to continue to delight a core part of FAST’s customer base that has chosen the Linux/UNIX OS. You can bet that we’ll innovate on Windows, too, and over time we hope customers will see .NET as a preferred platform choice." Now Microsoft can renew it's full focus on Yahoo! -- if it isn't already too late.