Enterprise Information Access is any software that brings information to a user without that user having to know where the information is stored. Traditionally users have had to know what reports or what client applications to start up in order to find information. EIA software pulls a very wide range of information into indexes and aggregations and caches and makes it available via search, reports or browsing tools.

Features

These are the main features of products in the EIA field:

1. The data is stored in the system of record and the EIA software goes out and finds it.
2. Sources of information can include databases, office documents, unstructured text and web pages.
3. Enterprise Search is the most common entry point for EIA.
4. Information is available for fast and efficient access via common Internet search techniques such as indexing and aggregation.

Products

The following vendor products offer EIA capabilities:

1. Autonomy IDOL
2. Convera True Knowledge
3. Coveo
4. Endeca search and document retrieval
5. Exalead (with ex Altavista employees)
6. FAST Enterprise Search and Transfer
7. Google Onebox Search Appliance
8. IBM Omnifind Yahoo Edition
9. Inquira
10. Insight Software
11. ISYS Search Software
12. Kaidara Software
13. Progress Software EasyAsk
14. Thunderstone
15. Vivisimo Clustered Search

According to Gartner "information access" set of technologies encompasses

• enterprise search,
  
• content classification;
  
• categorization and clustering;
  
• fact and entity extraction;
  
• taxonomy creation and management;
  
• content analytics,
  
• information presentation (visualization) to support analysis and understanding;
  
• and desktop or personal knowledge search to address user-controlled repositories in order to locate and invoke documents, data, e-mail and supporting business intelligence.