Microsoft Swallows Fast Search & Transfer

The Norwegian company will help Microsoft expand upon and improve its existing enterprise search products.

Microsoft may have been unsuccessful so far in its attempts to romance Yahoo, but its moves on a company from Norway have been much more successful. On Friday, Microsoft announced that it had completed settlement of its tender offer for Fast Search & Transfer ASA, an enterprise search company based in Oslo.

Fast, which provides search platforms to help companies sift through and access internal data, is now a Microsoft subsidiary, but will stay planted in Oslo. The company’s CEO, Markus Lervik, will become Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Enterprise Search, and existing Fast customers will be able to continue their relationships with the company.

“Together we’ll deliver better technologies that make enterprise search a ubiquitous tool, central to how people find and use information,” Lervik said in a statement.

As a Microsoft subsidiary, Fast will begin work on a variety of Microsoft projects, including Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, search for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and FAST ESP, and future delivery of a single enterprise search platform.