Microsoft's offer of $1.2 billion for enterprise search major Fast Search and Transfer may ruffle a few feathers in the enterprise arena. The major buy this year marks a high premium on other acquisitions following down the line.

Enterprise search is regarded as a much more complicated proposition owing to the unstructured data repositories. Fast Search and Transfer has been a major player in this arena and brings 10 years of technology to Microsoft's portfolio.

Combined together with Microsoft's search server product and the Sharepoint collaboration platform, this is one significant move by the Redmond giant to deliver an enterprise solution to data management.

There are speculations that Google itself might consider an acquisition to bolster its presence in this space.

Perhaps the quote from Information Week brings the whole point of the acquisition into perspective:

Why the urgency? Enterprise search "is for workers tomorrow what Internet search is for consumers today - an indispensable tool that helps them quickly find the information they need," said Microsoft Business Division president Jeff Raikes, speaking Tuesday on a conference call.

But accompanying this great acquisition news is the information that Bruce Jaffe, the Mergers and acquisitions guru at MS is leaving to start his own firm.

So, what could be the next big acquisitions in this space?