My New New Thing...
It was interesting to read the announcement of the Microsoft Search Roadmap that came out of FASTForward last week. As someone who has strong ties to SharePoint and equally strong interest in enterprise search, I am extremely pleased. It was five years ago when I wrote my first article on search and SharePoint (SPS2003 at the time). Typical (for me), I made a family analogy on my impression of search in SharePoint… “I’ve equated the SharePoint search results with my seven year old daughter’s room: I know what I’m looking for is in there somewhere; I just can’t find it.” Well, my daughter just turned 12 last week. MOSS search is better and I know a whole lot more about search… but I still can’t find anything in her room and, much like a CEO trolling through corporate data, I am little scared of what I might find…
I’m investing a lot of my time these days on going deep with FAST. For those who are unfamiliar with it, find some time over the next couple of months to catch a FAST demo. It will change the way you think about search. I’ve referenced John Battelle’s book “The Search” a few times in my blogging. He introduced me to the search concepts of recover (finding something you know exists) and discover (finding something new – to you). Working with FAST, I’ve added the concept of uncover (leveraging search results as analytics for decision making). It’s a pretty cool idea and is all about getting value from the entire result set; not just one result.
There’s a good message here. All the work we have done in the SharePoint community to collect quality data, tag it well, and enforce consistency of that capture will pay huge dividends as we tap into the robust features of FAST. It’s a product that sits at the intersection of knowledge management and business intelligence and offers value in both areas. Why should you care? Why is this a big deal? Why am I investing so heavily (personally) in going deep with FAST? The answer is simple… If you believe that SharePoint is the ultimate business tool, one that offers a framework for streamlining access to corporate assets and improving the associated business processes, then FAST, in some ways, is a wrapper around all of it that makes it easier to zoom in on a specific item or zoom out to “get the bigger picture”.
Full disclaimer here, FAST should not be considered “plug and play”. You just don’t turn it on and wait for the magic. There is a lot to learning this product and there is an accountability to “teaching it” where the good stuff lives and how you define “good”. But, much like SharePoint, the biggest challenges offer the richest rewards. In a few years, if not sooner, an enterprise search tool will be required. People demand immediate answers; executives are accountable for real-time decision making. The success of your business will depend on your ability to deliver corporate knowledge seamlessly and quickly… to all users. I think Microsoft made the right choice in putting FAST in this space.
Over the coming months, look for me to extend my blog posts to include thought leadership around implementing FAST solutions. I’m working directly with the FAST team (equally impressive as the product itself) these days and am learning lots and lots… from a technical and business perspective. As always, I’ll continue to share my stories…