FAST

Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) made its latest assault on the enterprise market today, in what could be a compelling first step toward extending search tools beyond their present applications.

The new FAST Adaptive Information Warehouse (AIW) is a multi-package software product that builds on Corporate Radar, a business intelligence firm FAST bought in April 2006 for about $8 million. AIW includes FAST Radar as "a web-based business intelligence portal and tool that brings actionable [sic] information and statistical analysis to decision-makers organization-wide." A front-end FAST Data Cleansing solution prepares the data for FAST Radar by applying "linguistics" to make it searchable by ad hoc queries.

Now, in addition to competing with the likes of Google and Autonomy Corp. plc for enterprise OEMs in the compliance and search tools market, FAST will pit itself against providers of business intelligence software, like Business Objects, Cognos, and SAS. It may also run into relational database management vendors such as Oracle.

FAST isn't admitting to open competition with these vendors, some of which are partners -- it's aiming more for "coopetition." Still, that marketing-correct nod doesn't stop FAST from claiming faster query performance than the relational database management systems most business intelligence (BI) tools are based on. It also works with unstructured as well as structured data, which lots of BI tools do not. And unlike other BI-based query tools, FAST says it will work for ordinary users in an organization instead of specially designated administrators.

"FAST can do cleansing and incorporating of unstructured data and make better use of BI systems," says Davor Sutija, VP of strategic development at FAST.All that said, AIW hasn't yet penetrated FAST's customer base. Jim Livingston, director of IT infrastructure and data resource center for University of Utah Health Care, for instance, has been a Radar user for two years. He's noticed an increase in investment by FAST since it acquired Radar, but he hasn't yet coupled Radar with the FAST search capabilities, which AIW aims to do.

Still, he likes Radar as is. "We had Cognos de-installed," he says. "It was too complex for our users and too IT-dependent." His organization uses Radar to apply business intelligence to structured and unstructured data in a 1-Tbyte store that encompasses clinical and financial information in Oracle format using HDS storage arrays. He says he's looking forward to using the search capability FAST is touting.

In keeping with FAST's other enterprise-level search tools, AIW isn't cheap. Most installations cost between $400,000 and $500,000 -- and it's likely to only go up as features and functions are added.

This is not the first time a search vendor has claimed BI capabilities. Google and Autonomy have claimed BI capabilities -- at least in theory. And other players, such as EMC with the still-nascent Infoscape, Kazeon, Njini, and Scentric are likely to reach into as many areas of specialization as they can. (See EMC Vows More for Infoscape.)

"It's the next logical step," says analyst Brian Babineau of the Enterprise Strategy Group. He thinks this announcement puts FAST at the forefront of the use of search for BI, because FAST is a big enough company to command serious attention among enterprise clients, in contrast with firms that are smaller or less experienced in the market. (See FAST Primps for Storage OEMs.)But others won't take long to join the trend toward front-ending BI, if they can. "A year from now, we'll have a different conversation," Babineau says.

Mary Jander, Site Editor, Byte and Switch