Microsoft to Buy Norwegian Search Firm

"This is a very hot, fast-growing area, where the largest percentage of the customers" want more sophisticated search capabilities, Raikes said.

Although Fast's software was a major consideration, Raikes emphasized that bringing the company's research team on board was a bigger lure. He stopped short of saying that Fast CEO John Lervik and his team would be also directed toward Microsoft's Internet search software.

But having such talent in the house cannot hurt.

Asked how Microsoft will leverage Fast's talent for other Microsoft products, Raikes acknowledged the "relevance of the work they're doing to the Web search area, but we have nothing to announce at this time."

Fast's software differs from other business search packages, such as IBM's(IBM Quote) OmniFind, in terms of the scale of Fast's engine, Lervik said. It can search "not just millions of documents or records, but billions," he said. "It's much larger scale than anything else that's out there."

The Fast engine was designed from the ground up on a service-oriented architecture model, Lervik said. SOA allows applications to be reconfigured and extended quickly to other business uses, without a lot of development work.

Fast works with archiving products from HP(HPQ Quote) and EMC(EMC Quote). Those OEM partnerships acted as an incentive on Microsoft, which considered a number of other search developers before settling on Fast, Raikes said.