Search applications firm Endeca has announced two deals that it says will improve visibility across the enterprise. The firm has extended its agreement with SAP to integrate business intelligence software into its Information Access Platform and signed a new deal with Informatica to integrate PowerCenter and PowerExchange.
The OEM deal with SAP will see Endeca integrate Xcelsius software and SAP BusinessObjects Intelligent Search software into its Information Access Platform, its flagship enterprise search product.
Endeca says that the combination of its technology with SAP’s platforms will help business analysts to create data visualisations within search applications.
Speaking to CBR about the deal, Paul Sonderegger, Endeca’s chief strategist, said that the clarity offered by seeing data in a visual format rather than as a list of numbers can speed up the decision-making process.
“It’s a point and click, drag and drop, tool for creating dashboards with charts, graphs, stoplights, whatever kind of analytics they want, on top of any data source,” he said. “It’s the combination of a familiar data visualisation tool with a new kind of interaction with the data.”
Seeing data in a chart or graph form is much more effective than just looking at words and numbers on a screen, Sonderegger said. Using the example of a car manufacturer looking for a bolt to connect two parts of the vehicle, he said. “You don’t want to spend a lot of money on the bolt because there are other more important parts, but it has to perform at high temperatures, it has to be lightweight. It’s much easier for the engineer to absorb all the information if it’s in a visual form rather than a long list of numbers,” he said.
Seeing a visualised display of data helps the user understand the data better, Sonderegger said.
Endeca will also integrate SAP BusinessObjects Intelligent Search into its Information Access Platform, providing a single point of access to multiple sources, including secured sources which cannot be indexed, open sources on the public Web and Endeca platforms. The company says that this will help large organisations who may have different search applications installed in different departments.
Endeca’s second announcement centred on a deal with data integration firm Informatica, who will PowerCenter and PowerExchange with Endeca’s Information Access Platform. The firm says that the deal will enable customers to unify data from databases, warehouses, and enterprise business systems with content from product lifecycle management (PLM) and enterprise content management (ECM) systems.
Sonderegger said that this will improve visibility and search capabilities across the enterprise. Endeca customers will be able to use industry-standard software for integrating data into a search engine. Customers do not have to already be signed up with Informatica as Endeca will be reselling the platform, Sonderegger added.
“Informatica has a proven track record of success in helping the world’s leading companies leverage their information assets to grow revenues, improve profitability, and increase customer loyalty,” said Jason Purcell, senior vice president of marketing and product management, Endeca. “By integrating with and re-selling industry standard data integration software, our customers can use skills they already have to populate their search applications with enterprise data, reducing deployment time and costs.”
