Well if you dislike FAST now, you may like it even less when Microsoft acquires them

Microsoft has just offer to acquire FAST. I’m guessing this is a move to strengthen Microsoft internet search capabilities. It going to take Microsoft awhile to incorporate FAST in Sharepoint, given that FAST is Java based and Sharepoint is .NET. What will be interesting is determining the impact of this acquisition with respect to the Documentum?

The indexing engine that is currently available with Documentum D6 is FAST. While performance of FAST is much better than the old Verity search that was part of Content Server in version 5.2.x and earlier, and the FAST infrastructure is more scalable, these benefits come with a steep price in complexity and hardware requirements. I am aware of multiple clients that have not installed FAST or have asked system integrators to integrate Documentum with other search engines.

In my previous post, you can see that a fellow Documentum consultant was asked to integrate Google Search Appliance with Documentum. Also, Documentum currently offers a Content Server OEM Edition that comes with Lucene instead of FAST. In version D6.5, Lucene is supposed to be an installation option that is part of Content Server.

How will this acquisition change Documentum’s relationship with FAST? Will the integration of FAST into Sharepoint strain the OEM relationship between Documentum and FAST? Ultimately, the better question to ask is “will Lucene become the Documentum de facto search engine?”

My guess is YES – maybe in D7 timeframe.