Obviously it seems like Redmond has been listening, and has rolled out a version of their desktop search tool that can be integrated in an enterprise environment.

I did an interview of a major IT magazine just a few weeks ago about desktop search and enterprise search, they were interested in who might become the dominant player. My opinion at the time was that although Google tools linked very nicely in a local/internet environment, because of Microsoft’s dominance in the enterprise, with a majority of business servers already running varieties of their software the ability to link their the current desktop search tool to their enterprise search tools could be a decisive weapon against Google. When the first version of the desktop search came out I had been surprised that these feature weren’t in it and had even gone as far as emailing Microsoft a feature request.

The new enterprise version contains all the features I’d hoped for and provides many more useful tools for enterprise managers in terms of packaging and distributing the programme throughout the enterprise. Configuring the software seems a little more complex than it need to be and a wizard based system to help more novice IT managers would be useful.

However if your internal network is Microsoft based and you are looking for a single tool to cover all three environments local, internet and enterprise Microsoft Desktop Search represents extremely good value…its free.