1. A method for using a federated ontology as an index to business enterprise knowledge, comprising: receiving a request for the business enterprise knowledge; mapping the request to a concept within the federated ontology, wherein the federated ontology comprises a plurality of localized ontologies that are linked through one or more concepts; searching the federated ontology for the concept to identify one or more data sources holding the business enterprise knowledge; retrieving the business enterprise knowledge from the identified one or more data sources as search result data; and returning the search result data.