Enterprise Data Management (EDM) is the basic concept of managing data in a central repository with protected access along with ways to share data responsibly.  Various approaches have been pushed into a production environment with this goal in mind.  These uncoordinated approaches by various segments of the organization can result in data conflicts and quality inconsistencies – making it difficult for users to trust the data as it is incorporated into models, mapped to applications, used to perform calculations, shared among participants and relied upon for decision-making. 

Enterprise level data search capabilities has proven to be very useful for a fast paced environment and can provide a rapid return of input that is valuable.  This technology helps the end user make faster decisions based on the same information that could have taken days to receive instead of a few seconds.  Many developers and companies have created a wide variety of this same concept, but over the years that concept has strayed off course.  The basic concept is to create a single source search capability with the ease of use for the end user along with reliable results that pertain to the end users request in a timely manner.   Now we have a large amount of software that performs similar functions each with a slightly different take on the overall objective.