FAST

FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint delivers an exceptional intranet and people search experience and a platform for building custom search-driven applications.

Basics that may Interest you:

FAST is a Norwegian company based in Oslo, On April 24, 2008, Microsoft acquired FAST. FAST is now known as Microsoft Development Center Norway.

FAST uses complementary technologies from BBN Technologies for speech recognition and Stellent (now part of Oracle) for the conversion of different file formats. 



Why do we need FAST with SharePoint 2010

Automatic Metadata – To avoid any confusion or ambiguous Meta tagging, FAST metadata generation occurs while the content is being created. Now you have terms and language that are familiar to your team and often unique to your business.

Relevance Tuning – Relevancy is key. You have a specific topic in mind when you search so why settle for receiving a slew of extra findings? This relevance is subjective among different users and locations in your company so FAST gives you the ability to fine tune your search model to the needs of different applications to benefit each user type or persona.

Contextual Matching – Think comprehensive. FAST highlights the context and intent of the query to give you the best results, all matched with terms and phrases that appear in the context of the matching text. After all, search is only as strong as its context and FAST captures these contextual results with precision to deliver a specific, superior search experience.

Visualizing Search Results – Why not see before you click? This speaks again to the productivity of FAST when you can see a search result before you click. Users can access thumbnails and preview images from search results so they can recognize the correct content quickly and with better context. Admins can add visual banners and apps with Visual Best Bets to pinpoint critical information for their users.

Backbone for Search-Driven Applications – FAST allows you to build search-driven apps for specific roles in your company. The apps gather specific content from defined sources and add structure to unstructured information and, as a result, specific user groups increase their productivity with a more contextual and interactive search experience.

Refrences


http://en.wikipedia.org


http://sharepoint.microsoft.com

http://blog.fpweb.net