Accenture, Fast Search and Transfer and Microsoft establish a think tank for search engine technology development in Oslo.

Search technology trend surveillance

We recently heard one Google representative talk about Google’s biggest worry. It was not innovation from competitors like Yahoo! or Microsoft, mind you, but the possibility that there were other young geeks out there, working in a garage, preparing the next great leap in search engine innovation.

Which is why, the representative said — tongue in cheek — that Google tried to buy all new innovative search engine start ups in Silicon Valley.

Radical innovation is by its very nature an unpredictable process, and search engine companies need to have their ears to the ground in order not to identify the best talent. Google has, for instance, its own programming contests.

The Fast Innovation Center

Fast Search and Transfer has now established its own innovation center together with Accenture and the Accenture/Microsoft owned company Avanade. Avanade is a global IT consultancy dedicated to using the Microsoft platform to help enterprises.

Accenture has been a partner of Fast since 2005. Microsoft, who bought Fast earlier this year, has recently made Oslo the capital of its enterprise search efforts.

The Fast Innovation Center is going to strengthen competence development in the area of search and lay the foundation for new enterprises.

Target groups

The main target group is customers and partners of the three companies, but students that want to learn more about search technologies and write theses on the topic are also welcome.

According to TU.no the center is to be similar to the Briefing Center Microsoft has in Redmond, USA, where potential customers get to see Fast’s and Microsoft’s enterprise search products in action. This center is to become more than a simple sales unit, however.

It will, for instance, be co-located with the Information Access Disruptions (IAD) center in Oslo, a so-called Center for Research Based Innovation supported by the Research Council of Norway, and that has Fast, Accenture and the Norwegian media company Schibsted as industrial partners.

The Norwegian Minister of Science, Tora Aasland, was present at the opening of the center and expressed great interest in search, according to Computerworld Norway. She addressed the need for a fruitful cooperation between the private and public sector.

The center has an annual budget of 1 million US$.

According to Dagens IT Kirsti Kierulf of Accenture says that the center will be a solution oriented think tank involving some of the best talent both locally and globally. Students who want to work with the center can email her at kirsti.kierulf@accenture.com.

See also: Microsoft’s Fast Search and Transfer raided by police