Search Technology Provider Partners with SAP, Informatica

But a new alliance between SAP, Informatica and Endeca, a provider of search applications for the enterprise, may prove to be a significant step toward integrating search engine technology directly with enterprise applications.

The concept of enterprise search has been around for a while. But implementing it has proven to be a challenge because of the difficulties in configuring search engine appliances and then integrating with all the various data sources in the enterprise.

By partnering with SAP and Informatica, Endeca is integrating SAP Xcelsius dashboard software for business intelligence applications and search technology that was developed by the BusinessObjects unit of SAP into Endeca’s Information Access Platform. Endeca expects to make search technology more accessible to enterprise users by exposing search as an integrated element of applications they already use.

Separately, Endeca is also moving to resell Informatica’s PowerCenter and PowerExchange to give customers more access to a broader array of data sources. Although Endeca will support other data integration offerings, the company is choosing to resell the Informatica technology because it has broad acceptance among the most customers.

Endeca’s goal, company officials said, is to ultimately give IT organizations a platform for giving end users the ability to federate searches across any number of applications using a platform that comes tightly coupled to the most popular applications and middleware offerings already in use in the enterprise.