Microsoft buys enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer for US$1.2 billion.

[Steve]

Microsoft has offered to buy enterprise search software company Fast Search And Transfer for 6.6 billion Norwegian kroner (US$1.2 billion). The acquisition will bring Microsoft powerful high-end search technologies to complement its enterprise infrastructure offering, the company said. Microsoft's recent efforts in the enterprise search market have been aimed at the other end of the market. In November, It introduced two new low-end enterprise search products, Search Server 2008 and Search Server Express 2008, both based on its SharePoint Server 2007 business productivity platform. It is pitching Search Server 2008 as a cheap entry into enterprise search, while the Express version is free for single installations.

More...