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10 February 2010, 16:39

Microsoft drop Linux and UNIX enterprise search support

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Microsoft has announced its is dropping support for the FAST enterprise search system on Linux and UNIX to concentrate on the Windows version. The announcement came in a blog posting from FAST CTO Bjørn Olstad, entitled "Innovations on Linux and UNIX".

According to Olstad, the releases in 2010 of FAST ESP will be the last to include a search engine core that runs on Linux and UNIX. Microsoft is planning to offer transitional support and says it is committed to interoperability; it also adds that ESP 5.3, the last cross-platform version, will be supported for ten years. Despite this, the company also plans to offer a "Customer Upgrade Program" to migrate users to either a hosted solution or onto Windows versions of FAST.

Those customers may already be looking at open source solutions such as Apache's Lucene and Solr. Lucid Imagination provide subscription based support for both Lucene and Solr. Lucid Imaginations's marketing head, David Fishman said, in a posting on the Lucid site, that the move was expected and pointed to existing Lucene user's such as MySpace which searches over 827 billion records with the open source search technology. Other Lucene users include Monster.com, LinkedIn.com, Netflix and Digg.com and Lucid Imaginations customers include Ford, Nike, Sears and Macy's.

Microsoft acquired Fast Search & Transfer (FAST), a company that developed enterprise search technologies, in August of 2008.

(djwm)

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