Microsoft beefs up search systems for business users

Bill Gates promises better search and collaboration capabilities in Windows and other tools

Microsoft announced plans for new search and collaboration tools at its annual CEO summit in Redmond this week, in a move likely to be interpreted as a response to Google's push into enterprise search.

In an email to customers and partners released to coincide with his keynote at the event, Bill Gates said the explosion in corporate information had " overwhelmed the tools we use to do our day-to-day jobs" and cited research claiming information workers spend 30 percent of their time searching for data.

Aiming a thinly veiled swipe at Google, Gates argued that to cope with this "information overload" there is a need to move beyond traditional search tools and develop software that is "tuned to better match the way information is created and stored… so that it is capable of searching all types of structured and unstructured business content".

Gates said Microsoft aimed to achieve this by incorporating new collaboration, workflow optimisation, and business intelligence capabilities in its releases of Windows Vista, Office 2007, and Microsoft Office SharePoint 2007, to make it easier for users to access business information.

"Microsoft's goal is to deliver enterprise information access solutions that present information workers with a single, unified way to get at the information they need no matter where it resides, without leaving the application they are currently working in so they can make smart decisions and take action with greater speed," Gates wrote.

Specifically, the vendor announced plans for a new collaboration search tool called Knowledge Network for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that Gates said would track expertise and relationships in an organisation so staff can easily connect to people with skills and knowledge relevant to their tasks.

The vendor also unveiled plans for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server for Search 2007, a new mid-market-focused enterprise search tool capable of searching multiple data sources; and a free client-based tool, called Windows Live Search, that will be launched in beta in the second half of the year to provide a single interface for users to search the internet, desktop and corporate networks.