IDC just published a fairly informative presentation titled “Unified Information Access: The Evolution of Search, Analytics, and Business Intelligence”.  Since IDC charges for this report, I cannot go into much detail in order to respect their intellectual property.  However, the essence of this presentation was basically focused on the mining of all of the structured and unstructured data that a typical person comes in contact throughout the work day.  If you are an IDC subscriber, I encourage you to read it.

This particular research was of interest to me because of two recent acquisitions of Dassault Systèmes – EXALEAD and NetVibes.  For those of you that are hearing about EXALEAD or NetVibes for the first time, DS positions these brands as “Information Intelligence” applications.  We often say that they “reveal” insights from multiple structured or unstructured data sources in order for users to make more informed decisions.  To me though, what differentiates them the most from traditional BI tools is the potential to integrate the results of an EXALEAD or NetVibes search or report into a business process managed by ENOVIA.

A great example of this is the new “3DS Exalead ii for Spare Parts” search-based application (SBA).  We are currently looking at ways to integrate this particular SBA into the part selection process for ENOVIA’s applications that manage the enterprise bill-of-material.  Some thoughts:

• How valuable would it be for a product engineer to know inventory levels when choosing a part for the engineering BOM or even defining alternates and subsititutes?
• What happens when manufacturing has an unexpected problem or even runs out of inventory for a specific part? A quick search of existing inventory makes it easier for the manufacturing engineer to proceed with the deviation.
• Or, how about a service engineer needing to resolve an issue at a customer site.  A quick search of existing inventory can identify the parts to use.

We are anxious to know your thoughts on this.  Thanks.