Microsoft Unveils Free Enterprise Search Product

Published: November 7, 2007

by Alex Woodie

Microsoft this week introduced a new product called Search Server 2008 Express that will give users free access to the level of search capabilities normally found in higher-end search products. The company also announced distribution changes for SharePoint Services, a Windows Server technology that plays a key role in Microsoft's search strategy, raising some questions about what moves Microsoft might make next as it battles Google and Yahoo! for search market share.

Enterprise search has become more popular as employees increasingly use search engines to find stuff on the Web. According to Microsoft, workers waste up to 9.5 hours every week trying to find information without using the Web, costing their employers millions of dollars in lost productivity. This is what's powering the market for enterprise search, which Gartner says will be a $730 million business this year, up 15 percent from 2006.

Microsoft has been trying to capitalize on this need with SharePoint Server, its flagship search offering. It also offered a slightly less complex product called SharePoint Server for Search, which the company is renaming Search Server 2008.

Yesterday, the software giant unveiled the new Express version of Search Server 2008 that shares the same basic architecture with SharePoint Server 2007. Like its two bigger brothers, Search Server 2008 Express will have no limit on the number of documents that are covered by its searches. The only difference between Search Server 2008 Express and Search Server 2008 is that Search Server 2008 Express will be limited to searching only documents contained on a single server, while Search Server 2008 will search across multiple servers.

Microsoft has adopted the OpenSearch standard for its entire line of enterprise search products. This will allow third-party software developers, including Open Text, Busines Objects, Cognos, and EMC, to write connectors that allow Microsoft's Search Server products to search their data.

Search Server 2008 Express will also ship with connectors that provide direct links to enterprise content management systems, including EMC's Documentum and IBM's FileNet. These connectors, which aren't expected until 2008, will be common to all of Microsoft's enterprise search products.

Jens Rabe, a vice president and general manager with the Canadian company Open Text, supports the openness espoused by Microsoft. "We want people inside organizations to have a full view of the content stored within our systems as well as any other. Search Server 2008 Express offers the kind of complete access we think is critical to information management."

Search Server 2008 Express, which requires Windows Server 2003, is currently at the release candidate (RC) level, and is expected to be available in 2008. To download and evaluate the RC, go to www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch.

While it introduced Search Server 2008 Express, Microsoft also announced some changes to the underlying technology in Windows that makes search possible: Windows Sharepoint Services. Last week, Julius Sinkevicius, a senior product manager, announced on the Windows Server Division Blog, that WSS 3.0 would not be part of the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008, and instead would be available as a separate download.

The move sparked some debate that Microsoft was planning to start charging for WSS as it tries to monetize the improvements it's made in search. That's not the case, according to Neil Hutson, a Microsoft employee. "There is certainly no plan to make WSS a product we sell. It's free guys and has been for a long time," Hutson wrote on his Microsoft blog.