Two enterprise search offerings planned for late 2006 have been postponed and may be cancelled or released in drastically different forms. The first, a desktop client with a unified interface for desktop, enterprise, and Web search, has been postponed indefinitely and may become a feature of Windows. The second, a SharePoint Server (SPS) 2007 feature that helps users find experts in particular subjects, will be released as an unsupported add-on and may eventually become part of other Office products. The changes highlight Microsoft's fragmented search offerings and uncertainty about how to compete with search specialists like Google and Autonomy.

Unified Search Client

In mid-2006, Microsoft said that it was building a desktop client, code-named Casino, that would allow users to conduct simultaneous searches of data stored on corporate networks (including file servers, intranet sites, and corporate applications), their local PCs, and the Internet. (Microsoft has used several names when referring to Casino externally, including OneView, Windows Live Search for the Desktop, Windows Search Center, and Windows Search 4.)

For searches of network resources, Casino would have required SPS 2007 and was originally planned for release about the same time as that product. For desktop searches on Windows Vista, Casino would have used the search technology built into the OS; for desktop searches on Windows XP, Casino would have required the separate Windows Desktop Search (WDS) client to be installed first. For searching the Internet, Casino would have tapped into Windows Live Search (formerly known as MSN Search).

In Dec. 2006, Microsoft announced that it will not release Casino publicly as planned, but instead will release it to some enterprise customers for testing and feedback in 2007.

Microsoft says it will eventually release some sort of product for conducting unified search queries across network, desktop, and Internet resources. However, it has not decided whether this functionality will be added to the Windows Vista interface through an automatic update or a service pack (which could cause antitrust concerns), released as the next version of the WDS client for both Windows Vista and XP, or released as a separate client as originally planned.

Knowledge Network

Originally slated for inclusion in SPS 2007, the Knowledge Network (KN) helps SPS users find experts on particular subjects.

Specifically, the KN extends SPS's people search features by scanning e-mail sent to and from users in an organization with SPS. For example, if a user is often writing e-mails about a product called "Orion," the KN might automatically add that term to the user's profile on SPS, allowing other users in the organization to see that he has expertise on that subject. The KN also adds some social networking capabilities to SPS, such as the ability to find coworkers who know a particular person, either inside or outside the organization. Users have granular control over privacy with the KN—for example, users can ensure that their external colleagues are exposed only to their managers or to others in their SPS workgroups.

In Dec. 2006, Microsoft announced that it would release the KN as a free unsupported add-on rather than as a supported feature of SPS 2007. Microsoft has deemed the add-on a Community Technical Preview, meaning that it will be broadly available but not covered by product support services or warranties, and not guaranteed to be available in the future.

The company says that it made this change because IT administrators were concerned about deploying a product that scanned e-mail but was not deployed as part of the e-mail client or server. In the future, Microsoft says that the KN—or similar features—might be integrated into other Office products, with Outlook being the most logical candidate. However, the company has not given any timeline or release details.

Fragmentation

The changes highlight an ongoing problem with search at Microsoft: because the company views search as a feature to be implemented in different ways across different products, no single team is responsible for coordinating the company's overall search strategy.

For instance, Casino was developed by the Online Services Group (formerly known as MSN), which also created Microsoft's first desktop search product in response to a similar offering from Google. However, with the inclusion of desktop search in Vista, Microsoft has decided that the Windows Engineering team (led by Senior Vice President Steve Sinofsky) should now decide how to release the unified search interface originally planned for Casino. Meanwhile, the Business Portals group, which oversees SPS, is responsible for network search, as well as the core search technology used in Vista and other Microsoft products (but not Web search).

This fragmentation clouds Microsoft's enterprise search roadmap, which will make it harder for Microsoft to compete with entrenched enterprise search leaders such as Autonomy and FAST. In addition, consumer companies like Google and Yahoo are using their strength in Web search to make inroads into corporations, as most recently evidenced by Yahoo's Dec. 2006 deal with IBM to provide a free search tool based on IBM's Omnifind. Without clear roadmaps and reliable product delivery, organizations might not trust Microsoft to deliver promised enterprise search features and turn to these competitors instead.

Resources

Background on Casino (then called Windows Live Search for Desktop) and the KN can be found in "Enterprise Search Strategy Refined" on page 18 of the July 2006 Update.

A blog posting noting the change to Casino is at shellrevealed.com/blogs/shellblog/archive/2006/12/12/The-fate-of-codename-_2200_Casino_2200_.aspx.

The KN team maintains a blog at blogs.msdn.com/kn/.