Isilon manages our NAS, but... no indexing server functionality?

Windows indexing service is disabled in our enterprise. We are required to store our Windows profiles - Documents, etc., are mapped to our network home directory via GPO. We also have file servers with hundreds of GB of project info, in .docx, .xlsx, .vsdx, .rtf, etc., formats.  We need to be able to find documents that contain words, phrases, etc... Like what windows has done for years, right?

All network locations appear to be not able to be indexed. I logged a helpdesk ticket and the response was to the effect, "Isilon doesn't support indexing like Windows Index Server does..."

Please say it ain't so!! I've seen a few references to this in the community-search, but they were older, "it's coming... sometime" answers. And it seemed like there'd be a GUI-type of search, not something embedded into Windows functionality, working like it should.... 

Suggestions would be truly appreciated. We've lost countless hours trying to locate needles in the proverbial haystack.