Cognos Inc. on Monday said it has integrated Autonomy Corp. technology into its business intelligence applications in order to combine structured and unstructured information.

The integration of Autonomy means business analysis and reporting in Cognos 8 BI can include data found in traditional databases, and unstructured information gathered from customer call centers, word documents, emails and other sources.

Combining information scattered across an enterprise for inclusion in BI applications has been a top priority for many corporations, Cognos said.

"We've seen real world examples driving the need for this deeper integration of structured and unstructured information," Patrick O'Leary, vice president of strategic alliances at the Canadian company, said in a statement.

Autonomy, based in San Francisco, provides infrastructure software for running software dependent upon unstructured information, including call center, customer relationship management, knowledge management, enterprise portals, enterprise resource planning, online publishing and security applications.