Information Builders recently unveiled a software tool developed with Google to help its business intelligence (BI) users access internal company data using the Google search engine.

Information Builders is "Google-izing" enterprise search and business intelligence reporting, giving enterprises an easy way to search corporate data centers.The New York-based company plans to announce on March 6 its new tool, WebFocus Intelligent Search. WebFocus combines Information Builder's iWay integration technology with the Google Search Appliance and an easy-to-use Google front end that requires no user training.

Kevin Quinn, Information Builders vice president, said the product was conceived in part to satisfy corporate users who've grown accustomed to fast answers from Google.

"If you're searching for something and you don't know where it is, everybody knows where to go: You go to a browser and search a Google engine, for example," he said.

The Google Search Appliance allows users to search through documents and e-mail stored throughout the enterprise, but things aren't that straightforward on the BI side of things, Quinn said. "If you're searching for something on a database, you typically go to a portal, to a tab, down some application line, and you may look through several folders of reports," he said."We've been able to bridge that gap" between the ease of Google searches and the complexity of BI, Quinn said, with WebFocus' ability to search enterprise reports. "Even dynamic ones being created on the fly can be part of the search result," he said.

Keith Gile, an analyst at Forrester Research, said the marriage of enterprise search and BI is being driven by users who don't want to have to know where data is located to be able to find it.This makes it a more compelling argument that says you can go beyond search and beyond BI and get the best of both worlds," Gile said. "We're seeing such a huge demand for this type of approach... and the vendors would be silly not to exploit it."

However, he warned that, as with any search, users must include some context within a search or risk bringing back thousands of results that might not include the specific data they were requesting.

The new tool will ship in the second quarter.

Source: 1, 2

Prashanth Rai

Tag(s):BI, Enterprise+Search