Fast Search and Transfer becomes the core in Microsoft’s new efforts to conquer the enterprise search market.

When Microsoft bought the Norwegian search engine company Fast Search and Transfer in January for US$ 1.2 million, there were those who feared that this could mean the end for the Norwegian search engine cluster.

However, instead of Microsoft totally assimilating Fast, it seems that Fast is — in some way — taking over Microsoft’s enterprise search activities, i.e. the development of search technologies for intranets and company databases.

Microsoft will add 50 new employees in the Norwegian cities Oslo, Trondheim and Tromsø. Fast already has some 300 people working on search in Norway.

The Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg says to the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation this means that Microsoft finds that Norway is the best place for the development of this kind of technology.

According to Computerworld Norway Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, who met the PM in Oslo today, says that the company did try to develop enterprise search on their own, but found themselves losing when competing with Fast. The solution was to buy the company.

Microsoft is now planning for growth in this area.

Microsoft plans to add Fast Search to SharePoint, the enterprise collaboration software product. The development of enterprise search for Linux and Unix will continue.

It is not clear to what extent these new efforts in the area of enterprise search will influence Microsoft’s development of web search. There are also Microsoft search technology centers in France, the UK and Germany.

The fact that Google and Yahoo! have also established development units in Norway, seems to indicate that the Norwegian search engine cluster is alive and thriving.

Se also:
Datagigant til Norge (NRK Beta, In Norwegian)
Norsk søketeknologi er best i verden (digi.no - In Norwegian)
Microsoft to Expand Research Center in Norway (PC World)