An enterprise intelligence system integrating WWW and intranet resource

Internet and intranet technologies make an unprecedented quantity and variety of information available at the desktop. However, key elements of competitive information may not be found in a timely manner because of unknown location among many diverse sources, information overload, variant research techniques, variant schemata, variant formats and protocols. It is difficult for users to integrate information across sources; the abundant information may thus not contribute to understanding for decision making. The Enterprise Intelligence System Network (EisNet) was funded in 1996 to assess intranet/intranet and InfoWeb technology as a business model for TRW System and Information Technology Group (S&ITG) program development and business opportunity management. EisNet is a prototype competitive intelligence system developed by researchers at TRW´s Digital Media Systems Laboratory. EisNet uses TRW´s InfoWeb^TM multimedia archive platform to integrate information harvested from Web servers, Web search services, and corporate intranet servers. InfoWeb^TM generates metadata through the natural language analysis of text, providing indexes based on concepts and structured data to complement full-text retrieval. InfoWeb^TM also generates automatically, providing a navigation method that supplements complex searching (i.e. mixing topical, relational, free-text, and geospatial queries in a single expression). The goal of EisNet is to make diverse information resources both internal and external to the enterprise accessible to users consistently and seamlessly