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While Big Blue already makes high-end enterprise search and content integration software, it found a need to make entry-level versions of those products available in the small to medium business markets.

Departmental projects and small to mid-sized companies may need products to help them manage information across the business. Not all of them need a sizable install of IBM's high-powered solutions to do search or content integration.

IBM wants to embrace that market, a sensible move because while there are a lot of bigger companies in the world, there are plenty of smaller firms that a high-end offering simply does not match.

The IBM WebSphere Information Integrator OmniFind Starter Edition addresses that market for search products. It can analyze and index information across a business from internal portals, databases, and other sources.

Companies needing expanded capabilities in OmniFind Starter can plug-in the Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA) framework. We have discussed UIMA before, and its ability to sift through concepts and not just keyword search.

Content management systems exist in many forms, beyond those used by online publishers. To address them and have information available beyond their confines, a business can use the WebSphere Information Integrator Content Starter Edition.

IBM said the Information Integrator works with distributed content "as if it were stored and managed in a single repository." Companies that have considered shifting to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) will find the Information Integrator can extend "the information as a service framework to include unstructured information."

Through the use of out-of-the-box connectors, or custom ones created with the toolkit that comes with Information Integrator, users can access multiple data repositories from a single interface built to use the Integrator's behaviors.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.