Business Objects Announces BusinessObjects 2000; New e-Business Intelligence Suite Provides Fast, Intuitive, and Effective Decision Making.

Business Editors

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 25, 2000

Sets New Standards in Ease of Use, Scaleability, and Extensibility

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, today announced BusinessObjects(TM) 2000, a strategic business intelligence (BI) platform and integrated BI toolset that enables users to access, analyze, and share information within and beyond the enterprise.

BusinessObjects 2000 includes the key products BusinessObjects InfoView, WebIntelligence(R), BusinessObjects, BusinessObjects Broadcast Agent(TM), and BusinessObjects Set Analyzer(TM). It also includes additional tools for deployment, training, and analysis. This integrated suite of BI tools provides query, reporting, and online analytical processing (OLAP) in a variety of environments -- web, Windows, and wireless -- as well as a business intelligence portal (BIP), and advanced set-based analysis. Available immediately, BusinessObjects 2000 offers users the maximum flexibility for working with information in the way that suits them, so that their decision making process is fast, intuitive, and effective.

"During the past several months we have unveiled several key pieces of the BusinessObjects 2000 suite. Today, we announcing the general availability of all of these pieces, which together as an integrated e-BI suite represent another milestone for Business Objects," said Crispin Read, senior director of product marketing at Business Objects. "We are proud of our the tremendous effort behind bringing such a comprehensive suite to market and continue to work with our customers to provide the solutions they need for their strategic e-BI deployments."

"Business Objects continues to demonstrate its leadership in delivering a comprehensive BI product suite that meets the needs for sharing and disseminating information to the Ingram Micro Enterprise," said Bob White, Vice President of Business Technology Services at Ingram Micro. "We particularly like the InfoView portal that allows us to view multiple levels of information from a single entry point. For instance, our end users can combine data from sales, clickstream data from our web channel and other departments, and customize their view so that they automatically see their favorite report first. This makes the product extremely easy to use and will allow us to effectively deploy to our Business Objects users at all levels of departments throughout Ingram Micro."

The BusinessObjects 2000 suite has been carefully designed to be easy to use, and it has been architected to be secure, scaleable, and extensible.

User-centric design provides ease of use to all levels of users

With BusinessObjects 2000, Business Objects provides users with an integrated BI solution that is easy for end users to learn and use and for corporations to deploy. Thus customers not only have an easy solution for deploying and maintaining the BI environment, but end users can quickly learn to access data and create business reports, thus maximizing the investment in the BI system.

-- Familiar interface. BusinessObjects 2000 provides an interface that is based on familiar technology and is easy for all users to learn and navigate. BusinessObjects has a certified Microsoft Office interface based on well-known Windows products such as Microsoft Word. InfoView and WebIntelligence have the look and feel of the web interface, and InfoView Wireless Edition is based on existing wireless device interfaces, giving users the option to access BI reports from their cell phone or personal digital assistant (PDA). In addition, end users have the option of personalizing their entry point into the BI system. BusinessObjects 2000 users can display multiple frames inside the web-based portal and can choose the content to be displayed in each frame. For example, a user could elect to see a specific report each time they log into the system, or could choose to show a web page or an Excel spreadsheet.

-- Complete BI functionality. BusinessObjects 2000 provides many levels of functionality that enable everyone in the enterprise -- from the mobile executive to the ad hoc report writer to the power analyst -- to get just the functionality they need. Users can perform a range of tasks, including simply viewing reports, OLAP, and advanced analysis of data in OLAP servers.

-- Graphical administration tools. Business Objects provides IT with easy, wizard-based tools with which they can quickly set up, deploy, and maintain their BI system. In addition, because the BusinessObjects 2000 tools all share the same central repository, IT only needs to learn one tool to deploy the range of products in the entire suite.

Full administration features for secure BI deployments

Users and IT staff alike are more concerned than ever about data security, both within and outside the organization. Business Objects realizes the importance of providing a secure method of accessing data and creating and exchanging reports, and has architected BusinessObjects 2000 to meet user, data, and extranet security requirements.

-- Stringent user security. Business Objects provides close control of access to the BI environment. User access from all platforms is password protected. In addition, each user has access to only the tool functionality that is necessary for their job.

-- Data security. The profile-based security of BusinessObjects 2000 enables IT to control the information access privileges for each user. Users have access to only the data that is appropriate for their position. For example, the vice president of sales will have access to all sales data, while the manager of the central region will only be able to see the data that corresponds to their territory. BusinessObjects 2000 now can store securely other documents formats, including Excel, PDF, and ZIP files.

-- Advanced extranet security. Business Objects is the leading BI vendor in

extranet applications, having more than 220 extranet customers to date. Customers exchanging data via an extranet have an added level of security available from Business Objects. In addition, BusinessObjects 2000 is able to work securely through multiple levels of firewalls, essential for extranet BI solutions.

Sophisticated, distributed architecture permits large-scale deployments

As business intelligence is being recognized as a strategic part of a company's overall IT and business strategies, many companies are starting with a small departmental deployment but quickly scaling up to implement a corporate BI standard. Therefore, it is important to provide a BI solution that can adapt from smaller projects to enterprise-wide deployments. BusinessObjects 2000 provides the elements necessary to enable a company to grow its BI project seamlessly from workgroup to corporate deployments.

-- Distributed component architecture. BusinessObjects 2000 is built on a robust, scaleable, component-based architecture providing load-balancing and failover. This component architecture means that customers can add more servers to their configuration. In this way, BusinessObjects 2000 can scale from smaller workgroups all the way to enterprise-level deployments of tens of thousands of users. BusinessObjects 2000 runs on both Windows and UNIX platforms, enabling users to take advantage of the powerful processing and significant scaleability features of their platform of choice.

-- Access to multiple data sources. As BI deployments increase from one to multiple departments, users need access to various data sources. For example, in a corporate-wide BI deployment, users would likely need to access data from relational data sources, OLAP servers, packaged applications, and personal data files. BusinessObjects 2000 accesses any data source, and enables users to combine data from multiple sources in one report.

Advanced integration and development tools provide extend BI functionality

BusinessObjects 2000 provides a software development kit (SDK) that offers customers' IT departments a broad range of customization options, from simple changes to the user interface to embedding Business Objects functionality into existing or new BI applications. This enables resellers or end user organizations to use Business Objects as the platform for their own analytic applications.

-- Rich scripting and extensive object model. In addition to providing support for Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and Active Server Pages (ASP), BusinessObjects 2000 now enables scripting in JavaServer Pages(TM) (JSP), a standard technology that enables developers to easily customize BusinessObjects 2000 independently of the hardware or server environment in which it is running. In BusinessObjects 2000, Business Objects has significantly extended its object model to give programmers access to more BI functionality, including drilling into reports and advanced report navigation. In addition, BusinessObjects 2000 includes documented JSP samples that give developers a head start on customizing the look and functionality of their BI deployment.

-- Enterprise portal integration. In addition to working with JSP partners, Business Objects is also working with leading enterprise information portal (EIP) vendors to provide BI content, such as BusinessObjects reports, to EIP vendors including IBM, Plumtree, and Viador. By partnering with leading EIP vendors, Business Objects offers customers unprecedented flexibility and freedom of choice in building their information portal strategy.

"BusinessObjects 2000 addresses the need for multi-architecture e-business infrastructure," said Philip Russom, director, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing Knowledge Center at Hurwitz Group. "This new suite recognizes that most e-businesses are in constant transition, moving certain users and systems from client/server architectures to web-based architectures -- whether intranet, extranet, or internet -- and into the future with wireless architectures. These multiple architectures must coexist in an e-business, as an infrastructure that serves the broad needs of business intelligence users and others. BusinessObjects 2000 provides a core server for data integration and tailored data presentation that pulls together these multiple architectures to enable a wide range of business intelligence functionality for all types of users."

"During the past several years, the BI market has undergone a significant evolution, moving from isolated pockets of small, departmental systems to full-blown enterprise deployments of tens of thousands of users," said Dave Kellogg, senior vice president of marketing at Business Objects. "That evolution is continuing with the move to BI extranets, which push the scaleability envelope even further, as customers deploy business intelligence to their customers, partners, and suppliers."

Kellogg continued: "Because of our long-term focus on large-scale enterprise deployments, we are very well positioned to exploit these marketplace trends. As scaleability becomes more and more important, we will see a division in the BI market. Those vendors who can scale to meet the demands of these new deployments will continue to succeed, while those with 'gee-whiz' departmental technology will start to fall by the wayside. If you look at recent marketplace developments, you can already see this starting to happen."

Customer Response

BusinessObjects 2000 has been tested and evaluated by more than 70 beta sites worldwide. Customers involved in the beta program include:

-- 3M

-- Allegiance Healthcare

-- American Honda Motor Co.

-- Black and Decker

-- Canadian Pacific Railway 

-- Chase Manhattan Corp.

-- Creditland

-- Exclaim Technologies

-- Ford Motor Company

-- GE Lighting

-- GE Medical Systems

-- Gordon Food Service 

-- Ingram Micro

-- Lucent Technologies

-- Nortel Networks

-- Penske Logistics

-- Peopleclick.com

-- PepsiCo

-- Pointclick.com

-- Unisys

-- Zurich U.S. Insurance

Availability

BusinessObjects 2000 is available now on Windows NT and Sun Solaris, and is expected to be available on HP-UX and IBM AIX in 4Q00.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions. The company coined the term e-business intelligence in 1998 to describe the intersection of business intelligence and the internet. Using e-business intelligence, organizations can access, analyze, and share information in intranet, extranet, and e-business environments. In intranets, the company's products provide employees with information to make better business decisions, and are used in environments ranging from workgroups of 20 users to enterprise deployments exceeding 20,000. In the extranet environment, the company is pioneering the use of e-BI in applications that allow organizations to build stronger relationships by linking customers, partners, and suppliers via the internet. In addition, the company's products can improve the performance of an e-business by providing reporting and analysis against the ever-expanding amount of transaction and profile data that is collected each day throughout the world wide web.

Founded in 1990, Business Objects pioneered the modern business intelligence industry by inventing and patenting a "semantic layer" that insulates users from the technical complexity of database systems. Today, the company has sold more than 2,268,000 licenses to over 10,900 organizations in more than 80 countries. The company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbols NASDAQ: BOBJ and PARIS BOURSE: code SICOVAM 12074, and included in the SBF 120 and IT CAC 50 French stock market indexes. Business Objects can be reached at 408-953-6000 and www.businessobjects.com.

Certain statements made in this press release by Business Objects are not historical facts but are "forward-looking statements" and may involve risks and uncertainties which could cause actual future results to differ materially and adversely from those anticipated by such statements. Included among the factors that could affect Business Objects' performance are: delays in production schedules; its ability to effectively manage future growth, and to identify, hire, train and retain, in a highly competitive market, individuals highly skilled in the programming and its rapidly changing technology. For a discussion of these and other risk factors that could affect Business Objects' business, see "Risk Factors" in Business Objects' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1999.

BusinessObjects is a trademark of Business Objects SA. WebIntelligence is a registered trademark of Business Objects SA. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

A full-text copy of this announcement may be obtained by calling the Company's fax retrieval line at 800/414-2114 and selecting option "two." The announcement may also be downloaded from the web; access http://www.businesswire.com/cnn and search on "Business Objects." Business Objects product inquiries should contact 800/527-0580.