While cute, the anecdote also exemplifies how much Google’s obsession with simplicity has helped build brand awareness, making their name literally synonymous with search. I can foresee generations X and Y being followed by generation S – one that will rely on search to accomplish almost any task.

Search’s simplicity has excited many people about the prospect of bringing Google-like search into enterprise business intelligence (BI) systems. There is something magical about the thought of asking a question using key words and receiving an answer in less than a second. Yet, as of now, BI search deployments are limited to a few functional areas, mainly Websites and departmental document directories.

It will probably stay that way unless people start to approach enterprise BI search differently than they do ordinary Web search. While end users still need the same simple user experience, enterprise BI search introduces a new level of complexity because of the heterogeneous architecture of applications and data stores.

Organizations need to plan for more than an ordinary Web search, which primarily addresses the reading and parsing of presentation-oriented file formats and URL-based site crawling. Too few search vendors stress the importance of accessing and indexing the 300-plus enterprise applications and databases that can make or break a BI search solution.