In 2008 Microsoft acquired enterprise search software company FAST, and have been integrating the software into the Sharepoint suite.

While Sharepoint is an excellent document and collaboration tool, the reality of a busy corporate life is that over 80% of corporate information is spread across ‘unstructured’ content stored in web pages, Word documents, email archives, laptop file folders and so on.

Enterprise Search provides the ability to scan all of this universe of data in entirety, index it, and provide access to this via Business Intelligence tools and reports.

Microsoft provide a number of resources that explain the powerful capabilities of FAST, including:

• FAST Search for Sharepoint Internet sites – Sharepoint has traditionally been a private document collaboration toolset, but has now grown to be a fully fledged CMS that handles public web sites too via their ‘Sharepoint for Internet sites‘. How it can be used to drive e-business revenues is discussed in this case study.

• Creating Search-driven applications – Search can be part of the Platform for PaaS (Platform as a Service) where developers can enhance their own applications through calling on Search functions.
  
  

Also check out the GovCloud 2.0 webinar, where the FAST Search for Sharepoint will be one of the applications we showcase for the public sector.

The combination of Sharepoint record-keeping facilities and enterprise search enabled business intelligence will make it an ideal solution set for the recent Managing Government Records initiative declared by President Obama.