Eclipse SMILA

Enterprise information systems have mainly focused on structured information residing in databases, ERP systems, etc. Now, however, the management of unstructured information is receiving more and more attention in the market. The term Information Access Management (IAM) has been coined as a name for a more general approach that bridges the two worlds.

Some vendors address the need for IAM tools with proprietary approaches mainly originating in their domestic market, such as search engine technology. In addition, some attempts have been undertaken to address specific parts of IAM even in the open source community (cf. UIMA).

However, a standardized architecture covering all parts of the IAM process on an enterprise level is still missing. This includes the standardization of the overall architecture and frequently used building blocks as well as a methodology for implementing IAM systems.

Having many years of project and product development experience in information logistics, search and related IAM applications, empolis GmbH and brox IT-Solutions GmbH decided to join forces and created Eclipse SMILA - Unified Information Access Architecture as an extensible framework for building big data and search solutions to access unstructured information in the enterprise.