Microsoft to phase out its enterprise search offerings for Linux and Unix

Microsoft is going to be phasing out support for Unix and Linux platforms for its FAST enterprise search products as of their next release (some time after 2010).

Microsoft shared that information, as well as other news about its near- and longer-term search plans as part of its latest update to its enterprise-search roadmap, which it made public on February 4. (Strangely, that blog post about ending support for Linux and Unix from FAST CTO Bjørn Olstad is entitled "Innovation on Linux and Unix.")  Via a new post on the Microsoft Enterprise Search team blog, company officials detailed what customers can expect this year and beyond. From that post:

• There are two standalone search products based on the technology Microsoft acquired in 2008 when it purchased FAST Search and Transfer for $1.23 billion. These products are due out in the first half of calendar 2010. These are FAST Search for Internet Sites and FAST Search for Internal Applications. As it indicated a year ago, Microsoft also is going to be offering two versions of SharePoint for Internet Sites (Enterprise and Standard) in the first half of this year. The Enterprise version will include rights to use FAST Search outside the firewall.
• FAST Search for Internet Sites includes the FAST Enterprise Search Platform (ESP) 5.3 core and includes content-transformation services, which are tools for processing structured and unstructured information, and Interaction Management Services (a new framework for building interactive user interfaces). This product will be licensable using a server-only model.
• FAST Search for Internal Applications includes the same ESP 5.3 search core which is licensable via a new Server/Client Access License (CAL) model.
• These two new FAST products will be the last release to include a serch core that runs on Linux and Unix. What does that mean for FAST users who have been running on those non-Microsoft operating systems, in terms of support? According to the blog post: "Microsoft is committed to supporting ESP 5.3—our multi-OS search core—for 10 years as per our support policy. Non-Windows customers who want to remain on the ESP 5.3 core can take advantage of new Windows-only innovations by using a mixed-platform architecture. Microsoft is also introducing a Customer Upgrade Program to help customers evaluate hosted solutions and/or a Windows-based deployment and remains fully committed to interoperability with non-Windows systems on both the front- and back-end."
• Microsoft also is discontinuing FAST AdMomentum, "a search-based advertising solution," company officials said.

In other, non-enterprise-focused search news, Microsoft announced on Februrary 5 that it had extended its search partnership with Facebook, but that Facebook would be taking over its own advertising business, a piece of which Microsoft had managed previously.