Microsoft Phasing Out FAST Search For Linux, Unix 146
viralMeme writes "Microsoft plans to begin phasing out Unix and Linux platform support for its FAST enterprise search products, as of its next release. According to a Thursday blog post from Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Bjørn Olstad, 'We’ve continued to sell, support, and update the Linux and UNIX versions of FAST ESP, and we’ve designed the next wave of FAST products (scheduled for release in the first half of calendar year 2010) to include a cross-platform search core that has been extended to take advantage of web services and support mixed-platform deployment models. With our 2010 products scheduled for release in a few months, we’ve just started to plan for our next wave of products. As a part of that planning process, we have decided that in order to deliver more innovation per release in the future, the 2010 products will be the last to include a search core that runs on Linux and UNIX. Many of our customers run FAST ESP on Linux and UNIX today, and we recognize that our future focus on Windows means change. To ease the transition, we’re investing in interoperability between Windows and other operating systems, reaffirming our commitment to 10 years of support for our non-Windows products, and taking concrete steps to help customers plan for the future.'"
It is a tiny market. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:"more innovation per release" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:WTF is FAST? (Score:2, Informative)
It isn't an acronym, it is a product name.
FAST Search. Microsoft bought them last year. Microsoft tried to get their Enterprise Search to work and failed multiple times and finally gave up and bought FAST since FAST kept taking their business.
Fast Search And Transfer (FAST) (Score:5, Informative)
Actually the full name of the company is Fast Search And Transfer (FAST).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Search_%26_Transfer [wikipedia.org]
Re:And nothing was lost (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It is a tiny market. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:And nothing was lost (Score:2, Informative)
You have no idea what you are talking about. Gardner has consistently rated FAST as either the #1 or #2 search engine technology. And under the hood, FAST was very open-source friendly -- most of the building blocks to make it came from open source projects. It was a VERY Linux friendly product. But when they sold out to Microsoft the writing was on the wall.
Re:Thats why theres lucene (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Uh, yeah... (Score:3, Informative)
transitive verb 1 a : to put into charge or trust : entrust b : to place in a prison or mental institution c : to consign or record for preservation <commit it to memory> d : to put into a place for disposal or safekeeping e : to refer (as a legislative bill) to a committee for consideration and report
It appears they're focusing on definitions "b" and "d."
Re:Thats why theres lucene (Score:3, Informative)
"FAST on Linux is fucking awesome" I'll have to share that with the rest of the support team.
Speaking purely as an individual, I wish Microsoft wouldn't have gone this way, although obviously it doesn't surprise me. On the bright side - for your organization at least - you've got another 8 years where we'll be supporting ESP 5.3, so you have a few years before you have to worry about finding another solution, or deciding that maybe running a few Windows servers wouldn't be too bad. Just saying. :)