MS Kumo Engine to Embed Open Source Technology

Microsoft plans to roll out its new search engine code-named "Kumo" that reportedly improves search results by suggesting more targeted searches capable of bringing users closer to the information they seek.

The Kumo team's technology reportedly uses open-source software if it's available. (Source: cnet.com)

Kumo to Compete with Google's Storage Engine

According to their blog, Kumo developer Powerset decided to turn to hadoop, a Lucene subproject that runs data-intensive applications on large clusters of commodity hardware. Unfortunately, there was no Hadoop equivalent to Google's BigTable Storage Engine. 

Thus, Powerset decided to develop an open-source equivalent to BigTable: built on top of HDFS (Hadoop Distributed File System).

Open-Source is More Flexible and Reliable

In comparison to closed-source software, open-source software isn't maintained by one vendor.

Open-source software is developed to harness the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process that results in better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost that is open to all.

HDFS is designed to run commodity hardware -- meaning computing is done in commodity computers manufactured by multiple vendors as opposed to being proprietary, is highly fault-tolerant and suitable for applications that have large data sets.

On the other hand: BigTable is closed-source, built on Google File System (GFS), is a compressed, high performance and proprietary database system Google designed to provide efficient, reliable data access using large clusters of commodity hardware.

BigTable is a distributed storage system for structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size -- a simple data model that gives clients control over data layout and format.

Microsoft's Double Standards on Open-Source Software

As noted by CNET, Microsoft is skittish about licensing its software under an open-source license but keen on consuming open-source software and embedding it into its proprietary products.

Kumo will be released in the near future, but it appears that Microsoft is still a little behind in the search game and may have lost their focus. Google and Yahoo! have both recently demonstrated similar functionality. (Source: pcworld.com)

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