Today’s ‘Optimize Your SharePoint Investment’ from Vitale, Caturano

I want to thank my ex-colleagues at Vitale, Caturano for a great event today in Waltham at Microsoft’s offices.  There were some good presentations about the use of Sharepoint in the enterprise, about some of the vendor offerings in the space, and specific stories about how SharePoint use has evolved by Andy Kawa from Goodwin Procter LLP and by Shelley Norton from Children’s Hospital Boston.

Probably the most interesting presentation to me (not to diminish the other presentations at all) was the one from Jeff Fried of FAST Search.  FAST was acquired last April by Microsoft, and is now their high-end search offering.  Jeff showed some very cool demos of FAST in action as well as talking about how FAST can effectively slide under SharePoint to provide what looked to me like “uber-search” capabilities.  For details on how this might work for you, see Microsoft Unveils New Enterprise Search Road Map: Strategy features FAST Search for SharePoint and FAST Search for Internet Business from Microsoft.