Enterprise Search goes after BI

The high rollers of enterprise search and retrieval are betting heavily on BI (business intelligence).

Following news in April of Google OneBox, which extended the reach of the Google Search Appliance to BI, IBM, Microsoft, and FAST announced new products and features last week for customers who want to marry search functionality with BI to get real-time business analytics into the hands of employees.

On Wednesday, IBM unveiled WebSphere Content Discovery for Business Intelligence, which allows users to access structured and unstructured information stored across their enterprise.

“We’re providing ad-hoc access to directly search against business intelligence data,” said Marc Andrews, IBM’s director of business development.

Microsoft entered the enterprise-search fray the same day, announcing that Office SharePoint Server 2007 will be able to search data in business applications, including SAP and Siebel, said Justin Chandoo, a senior product manager at Microsoft.

“We’re looking at exposing BI information from back-end systems in the context of where the user is working,” including Siebel and SAP apps, said Chandoo “The goal is to prevent information overload through enterprise-grade relevance.”

That news followed an announcement Tuesday of the Go! Search Service, which combines FAST’s ESP (Enterprise Search Platform) with Cognos 8 Business Intelligence technology.

Andrew McKay, FAST’s vice president of marketing, draws distinctions between his company’s technology and competing products from Google and Microsoft, which he says target smaller companies with less complex search needs.

“The real innovation in search…is happening at the high end of the market where a new generation of search technologies is changing the way companies conduct business,” he said.

Search companies target the BI sector to make inroads to a highly lucrative business market, said Whit Andrews, an analyst at Gartner.

However, the true test of enterprise search products always comes down to the relevancy of aggregated search results, he said. “We’ve got a Google addiction. We want to enter a few key words and get that rush of satisfaction.”