Microsoft Server 2008 (and a FREE Express Edition) Announced

Microsoft is announcing Microsoft Search Server 2008 and Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express.

Given that even small companies now have extensive internal knowledge repositories search across all of them becomes critical. Search Server 2008 and Search Server 2008 Express offer an enterprise-ready search solution that will let people find the information quickly and easily.

Earlier the only option from Microsoft stable for enterprise search involved  deploying Microsoft Office Sharepoint 2007. The search master Google also has an enterprise product for search with the lowest version (Google Mini Search Appliance) not supporting connections to other information repositories at a price of USD 6000 / yr.

The beauty of it all is that Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express, is a free, downloadable Enterprise Search product.  A release candidate of Search Server 2008 Express is available at http://www.microsoft.com/enterprisesearch

the search experience is similar to the familiar web search experience. The server can extract information from varied information sources including:

  1. EMC Documentum and
  2. IBM FileNet
  3. Sharepoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
  4. file servers
  5. web sites
  6. Exchange Server public folders
  7. Lotus Notes repositories

And if standards compliance is your requirement, the Search server is OpenSearch standards compliant (also supported by Cognos, Business Objects, EMC/Documentum, Open Text)

Learn more about the features of the Express Edition here.

IMHO, the success of search server will be determined by the search relevance it can provide. Going by the latest search results from Live Search, the future looks promising.

Disclosure: I solely use Live search now, given its comparable search relevance with Google and much better image and shopping search experience.

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