Conclusion (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

Applies to: SharePoint Server 2010, FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

Applies to: Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

This is the last of 12 articles that compose How Microsoft IT deployed FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (white paper).

When the enterprise search solution that used Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 was no longer practical, MSIT reviewed business, technical, and user requirements for an improved solution and chose to migrate to Microsoft FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint. The new deployment met all of the requirements and continues to provide the following benefits:

• Centralized management. The search solution is hosted in a single, central deployment.

• Content index completeness. All users can get search results from a single content index.

• Huge index capacity. The content index holds all content items from the crawls of all repositories for which MSIT wants to provide search coverage. The content index can accommodate projected growth to 200 million items.

• Faster crawls for fresher search results. An incremental crawl of each high-priority content source takes much less than 24 hours.

• Faster query responses. For most queries, users get search results in less than two seconds.

• More customizable search experience for more relevant search results. Search results are ranked according to relevance so that users can quickly find information that they need.

• High availability. FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint redundancy and failover configuration provides continuous search availability.

• Uniform search experience. Through the enterprise Search Center, all users worldwide have access to the same search experience.

• Significantly increased user satisfaction. As measured by the annual survey on MSW, user satisfaction with the performance and effectiveness of the search system and with the overall search experience increased 20 percent in 2010 and 26 percent in 2011.

The FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint deployment provides a robust enterprise search solution that empowers employees to find up-to-date, relevant information that is important for performing their day-to-day job functions. The solution helps connect employees with the work of colleagues all over the world, which enables them to collaborate more easily and work more productively than ever before.

Other articles in this white paper

For more information, see the other articles in this series:

• How Microsoft IT deployed FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint (white paper)

• Executive summary (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

• Background on the use of enterprise search at Microsoft

• Microsoft enterprise search teams

• Migration to FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

• FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint solution: environment and topology

• Measurable gains from implementing FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint

• Administration at the search service application level

• Collaboration with site owners (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

• Enterprise search center (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

• Lessons learned and MSIT best practices (Enterprise search at Microsoft, white paper)

To view the white paper as a single article on TechNet, or to download it, see Improving enterprise search at Microsoft: How FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint Powers Worldwide Intranet Search at Microsoft (https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb735129.aspx).