FAST debuts ‘intelligent’ enterprise search

By Kate Clifton

Fast Search and Transfer (FAST) has moved away from the ‘Google model’ of keyword-based search with its latest enterprise release, which it claims is its most intelligent and scalable platform to date.

FAST ESP 5.0, according to the Oslo, Norway-based software vendor, provides a more insightful search service, which takes into consideration data in many forms – not simply text and documents.

“The volume of data in large organisations doubles every year,” said John Lervik, chief executive of FAST. “Left unchecked, this information explosion threatens businesses’ ability to respond quickly to market and environment changes. Enterprise search is quickly becoming one of the most important investments companies can make to protect their futures, improve performance, drive down costs and increase profits.”

To improve search results, the platform features what FAST calls ‘contextual insight’ technology. This, it says, unifies document repositories containing text, structured data and rich media, to return more precise answers to queries – rather than listing references to where relevant content may be located.

This capability, a fusion of information retrieval and analysis software, enables more thorough checks for content that may be buried in documents, making accurate information more easily accessible by users, claims Lervik.

At the heart of the platform is FAST’s new Search Business Centre, which provides a workflow-based interface for centralised search management, tuning, configuration and monitoring. It means that non-technical users can, effectively, set up and manage numerous search applications from a single ESP installation.

The platform’s service-oriented architecture also aids easier customisation and can supports all major platforms, operating systems, interface languages and content sources.

www.fastsearch.com