Sheridan said he likely won't participate in the beta program for the software because the company is still adapting to the new features in WebFocus 7.1, which Administaff just installed in December. However, he said he plans to begin evaluating the new software as users become more comfortable with the reporting tool upgrade.

Michael Corcoran, chief communications officer at Information Builders, said WebFocus Intelligent Search uses integration tools from its iWay Software Inc. subsidiary, its WebFocus BI reporting software and the Google engine to link structured data from corporate databases to unstructured data sources like HTML files. That allows the tool to provide users with BI reports compiled from data stored across the enterprise, Corcoran said.

In addition to commonly requested searches such as those seeking to identify all information on a particular client or sales figures by region, the tool lets users search for information about internal IT systems, he said. For example, users could enter the names of employees who have left a company to find out whether they still have access to internal systems, Corcoran said.

Keith Gile, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said the marriage of enterprise search and BI is being driven by users who don't want to have to know where data is located to be able to find it.

"This makes it a more compelling argument that says you can go beyond search and beyond BI and get the best of both worlds," Gile said. "We're seeing such a huge demand for this type of approach... and the vendors would be silly not to exploit it."