Saturday, 12 January 2008

Microsoft wants to buy time

When asked in 2006 to executives of Microsoft, the company did not consider the purchase of a research document on the Internet or Intranet, the answer was surprising: "We have invested several billion dollars in our own search engine, explained it in substance. We can not decently indicate that this effort has been wasted by buying another technology. "

Beginning 2008, this speech was short-lived, since Microsoft has announced the takeover of the Norwegian Fast Search and Transfer for the equivalent of 880 million euros. Fast technology allows you to search a database of business text, video, graphics, e-mails and images. It is a specialist in the search for so-called unstructured content. Its technology is used by EMC, the world leader in the storage architecture. Among its competitors, include British Autonomy (4 billion market capitalization for a turnover of 344 million dollars), the American Endeca (not rated) and the french Exalead (not rated).

Fast is a start-up who was born with the World Internet and e-commerce. In 2000, the company achieved a turnover of $ 500,000 with its search system for business. Last year, its sales volume has exceeded $ 160 million. A priori it is a great success, but we must modulate this impression. Like many start-ups at the time, Fast failed to avoid excesses and it can be said that its governance and that its accounting was inadequate. Moreover, despite its size, Fast failed to generate cash. Last year, the company has restructured its sales force and, accordingly, its sales have stagnated.

Microsoft is, however, some fine accounts receivable and should be able to integrate the technology into its own Fast technology offering, including Sharepoint. It is possible that such an operation reconstructs the research industry. In scholarship, Autonomy greatly progressed Tuesday, Jan. 8.

As for the french Exalead, it is doing very well. In 2007, he made a turnover of 8.3 million euros, or three times the sales volume of 2006. At the end of the year, orders taken amounted to 10.8 million euros. In France, it counted among its clients BNP Paribas, Air Liquide, BRGM, DCN, Deloitte, Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi Aventis, and the directory 118218 Manutan.

François Bourdoncle, founder of Exalead, has positioned its technology as a research platform hybrid, capable of integrating information from the database of the company but also what is accessible on the Web. "Our technology enables us to win the critical projects for compliance to regulations, archiving and storage of high availability," says François Bourdoncle.

In these projects, it is often in competition with Fast, Endeca and Autonomy. The entrepreneur also believes that the system of "business intelligence" finding relevant information, will require this type of research hybrid.