Microsoft today will unveil plans to start incorporating Fast Search's technology into its products, rolling out a blueprint for capitalizing on one of the largest acquisitions in its history.

It still remains to be seen if the $1.3 billion deal will pay off. In fact, Microsoft veteran Jon Kauffman concedes that he was terrified at first about the possibility of the integration turning into a disaster. But then he heard Fast's engineers complain -- and he knew everything was going to be just fine.

Kauffman, general manager in Microsoft's Enterprise Search Group, flew overnight to Fast's Oslo, Norway, headquarters for a day of introductory meetings shortly after the Redmond company announced plans for the acquisition a year ago. He was especially concerned about the cultural fit, worrying that Fast's people wouldn't get along with his team of "rambunctious Americans."

His concerns were addressed in the first meeting, within about three minutes.

"Engineering is a very complaining culture. We always want to find failures and fix them," Kauffman said last week, explaining that he was pleased to see those tendencies at Fast. "There was this cascade of, 'Oh, yeah, I hate that, too! Boy, we've gotta work harder on this! And this is totally broke!' ... The engineering culture came out within the first day. And I think we've done fairly well from that point trying to get together."

International camaraderie aside, the past year hasn't been without complication for the Fast acquisition. John Lervik, the former Fast CEO, resigned from his Microsoft executive position last month following questions about the search company's accounting practices. Former Fast CTO Bjorn Olstad, a Microsoft distinguished engineer, is now leading its Fast subsidiary and Microsoft’s enterprise search development team.

In this screenshot from a video conference, Fast's Sven-Arne Gylterud (top, in Oslo) demonstrates Fast's technology on the Globrix real estate site as Microsoft's Jon Kauffman (inset, in Redmond) looks on. (Click for full image.)

Microsoft still expresses optimism about the prospects for Fast overall. 

With the deal, the company is betting on the future of high-end enterprise search -- not that ordinary list of links that comes back from a standard Internet search, but rather a custom-tailored, finely tuned and interactive set of results. Fast specializes in that technology, powering search functions on public Web sites of such companies as Best Buy and Globrix.

High-end search technology can also be useful for searching for files, programs and information across vast networks inside big companies. That wasn't the biggest part of Fast's business prior to the acquisition, but it's the first place Microsoft will be looking to capitalize on the Fast deal -- looking to build upon its existing relationships with big companies.

It's one area of search that Google has yet to dominate, which is one reason Microsoft sees it as an opportunity.

At a conference in Las Vegas this morning, the company will show some of its largest corporate customers how it plans to incorporate Fast's high-end search technology into SharePoint, Microsoft's corporate collaboration and document-management system. Companies that license the enterprise edition of SharePoint will get Fast Search technology incorporated as part of the deal.

That's a shift from the specialty pricing that has been more typical in the high-end search market. The integration of the technologies will take place with the release of the next wave of Office products, on a timeline the company has yet to announce. In the meantime, Microsoft says it will give SharePoint Enterprise customers access to the standalone Fast Search offering under the same terms.

Enterprise search overall is a growing market. Aggregate software revenue reached $1.1 billion among the 50 enterprise search companies tracked by Gartner Inc. analyst Tom Eid, up from $574 million in 2005. Software companies with good enterprise search technologies have the potential for a halo effect on their other products.

"If you can deliver a very refined, very effective search capability, that’s really important, because it’s helping people do their jobs better," Eid said. "That can then encourage other potential revenue opportunities for the vendor."

Fast is still working on search technology for public Web sites, but the expanded focus on search inside corporate firewalls represents a major opportunity to expand the Fast business, said Sven-Arne Gylterud, who leads product planning, product design and program management for Microsoft's Fast subsidiary. 

"Being part of SharePoint, I think that’s probably the best place you can be" to build that part of the business, Gylterud said.

Longer term, Microsoft also hopes that other products -- including Windows -- will from integrating Fast's technology, or at least incorporating its approaches. But the company is focusing on SharePoint for now, declining to go into details on those future plans.

The integration of Fast Search could make SharePoint Enterprise edition more attractive, filling out Microsoft's Office product family, said Leslie Owens, a Forrester Research analyst. At the same time, she said, Microsoft has to be careful not to make companies using standard SharePoint versions feel like they're getting an inadequate integrated search function.

"That’s a tough line to straddle," she said.

In the meantime, the Microsoft and Fast enterprise search teams will be working some odd hours.

One of the challenges they're facing is the 9-hour time difference between Oslo and Seattle. There's literally no overlap of regular working hours, which means that the teams often communicate via webcam or phone from their homes in the morning or evening while their counterparts are in the office.

Kauffman, for example, will often pad upstairs to his home office in the mornings for online conference calls with the team in Norway before he heads into work. In the process, he's learned that it's sometimes possible to have too much technology.

"Often in those mornings," he said, "we’ll turn the webcam off."