The IBM WebSphere Content Discovery for Business Intelligence tool overcomes traditional limitations of both enterprise search engines and BI tools, said Marc Andrews, IBM's program director for information management strategy.

For example, he noted that search engines don't typically provide direct access to BI data and that BI tools usually can't tap into unstructured data such as Web pages and text-based documents.

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Inc. has used the tool in a pilot project to provide access to unstructured data, including notes by call center workers about their interactions with client health care providers.

Before using the tool, the company could not access the unstructured data it needed to combine with structured data in the data warehouse, said Frank Brooks, senior manager of data resource management and chief data architect at Chattanooga-based BlueCross BlueShield.

With the tool, the company can build a single view of its health care provider clients, using both structured and unstructured data, Brooks said.