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I've seen a lot of postings on Linked In's Enterprise Search Engine Professionals board from consultants and FAST ESP customers (Linux and Windows based). Who are concerned over MSFT's direction with FAST becoming heavily integrated with SharePoint and that Linux and Solaris versions of ESP are no longer being developed and are in support only mode.

For FAST ESP customers a migration to FAST Search Server for SharePoint isn't necessary an attractive one and the argument against basically breaks down into the following:

• We're a Linux / Open Source Organization and moving to a Windows platform isn't going to happen
• We're a MSFT organization but we don't like SharePoint
  
• We've done a lot of work customizing FAST ESP and we don't want to redo that work or we believe we're unable to complete that work in FAST Search Server for SharePoint
  
• Finally there's the feeling of abandonment by FAST due to MSFT's change in direction for the product.

When MSFT made the announcement last year it offered Linux and Solaris customers 5 years support and 5 years extended support for FAST ESP. But there won't be new releases. So there isn't a sense of urgency but at the same time there is an understandable lack of interest in integrating FAST ESP with other applications or doing much in the way of enhancement.

FAST ESP on Windows clients is still an active product under the FSIA (FAST Search Server for Internal Applications) so the situation is slightly different.

So what is the answer to clients with FAST ESP? It really depends on who's answering.

• Open Source believers they would persuade you that Lucene and SOLR is the way forward. 
• Enterprise search vendors, will tell you their product is the solution to all of your problems.
• Many consultants will lead you down the vendors they have relationships (Full disclosure we're a MSFT and preaquistion FAST partner, but we have worked with Endeca, SOLR and Google Search Appliance).

So which option is right? In my opinion making a decision to replace FAST ESP with an alternative should be thoroughly thought through (Say it 5 times in a row and a little FASTer each time, yes pun intended).

• Consider what your organizations enterprise search strategy is first. Don't have one? A lot of your rivals already do and they will be getting productivity gains and cost savings because of it.
  
• Consider that MSFT is selling FAST to many of it's SharePoint clients as part of enterprise agreement renewals, which includes almost certainly many of your rivals
  
• Consider revising your technical and functional requirements that are in place already for the FAST ESP system. Your users have all experienced what Bing, Google and Yahoo has to over and their expectations are high and getting progressively higher.
• Consider the vendor's road maps, if they don't have a cloud based search engine in development you may be left explaining to your boss why the vendor you helped select doesn't fit with your CIO / CTO's overall IT strategy.

With these concerns addressed you're ready to move forward and make a selection for a new vendor, start with a short list and filter it down to three options. Personally at this point I'd bring in an expert in Enterprise Search to validate your requirements and help you interview the final three vendors. I'd also suggest considering a 1-2 week PoC bake off. Many vendors have pre-sales resources ready for this eventuality and there is nothing like hands on experience with a product  to get a feel for it.

At this point you may find the perfect solution to replace FAST ESP. If you don't, don't be afraid to delay a decision until  2012, FAST ESP is still supported and we should start seeing new releases and public/private cloud hosted options on the market during the course of the year.

One of the most common misconceptions I hear almost on a weekly basis is that search is just a install and go piece of software. The simple fact is this just isn't the case if you want to maximize you return on investment and improve your content's findability, configuration is essential.

At it's highest level the success of a search engine is it's ability to return relevant results and ranked in a reasonable order. To do this a search expert typically will create what is known as a ranking and relevancy model. If your site or application has any degree of personalization/user types, multiple models may be required. (Some search engines attempt to do this automatically with varying degrees of success).

So I've got the ranking and relevancy model defined, I can leave it now right? Alas No. As you add new content sources to the search engine or the content changes, as should the model. So the model should be regularly maintained. I'd recommend the following:

• First month since go live (Weekly updates)
• First 3 months since go live (Every 30 days)
• First year, at least review the model every 90 days
• And update the model(s) if any new content source is added

Sometimes the process of maintaining the model is an hour of work, other times it could be in the 8-16 hours range, it really depends on how much the content has changed since you last updated it.

So what's the value of this and why should your company spend the money in maintaining the ranking and relevancy model?

Put simply it's the difference between good search results and bad ones and from a business point of view it all ends up as  return on investment. If you don't update the model regularly, the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars you invested will not generate a significant return. You users will complain about search, IT will look bad for a "failed" project and the board will wonder what the money was spent on.

To give you an example I hear from a new potential client who says "We have vendor a, but it doesn't work after we spend $xxxxxxx of dollars, so now we want vendor b". To which I always reply when was the last time the search engine was looked at and the ranking and relevancy refined. The answer I always get is "not since we installed it x years ago".

So trust me, maintain your search engine, you won't regret it.