Business Objects Announces Certification to SAP Business Information Warehouse.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 22, 1998--

SAP Interface Certification of BusinessObjects Software Builds on

Companies' Complementary Functionality and History of Customer

Successes

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJY), the world's leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools, today announced that SAP(tm) has interface certified the BusinessObjects(tm) 5.0 enterprise query, reporting, and analysis system to SAP Business Information Warehouse(tm) (SAP BW(tm)).

BusinessObjects will give SAP R/3(tm) customers an integrated decision support system to access, analyze, and share data found in SAP Business Information Warehouse. Customers using SAP BW as their preconfigured data warehouse system for R/3 and other enterprise resource planning (ERP) and legacy applications will have the option of a robust SAP-certified tool that offers access to their enterprise information. The SAP Business Information Warehouse solution combines state-of-the-art data warehousing technologies with SAP business expertise to create a closed-loop decision processing solution.

International customers including Lawson Mardon, Texaco, and Clariant AG have served as beta sites for BusinessObjects certification on Business Information Warehouse. Reasons customers chose to use BusinessObjects with BW include Business Objects features for desktop reporting, web functionality, and access to enterprise information outside of BW.

"We are impressed by the tight integration we've found between BusinessObjects and SAP Business Information Warehouse," said Peter Ellerau, SAP BW project leader at Lawson Mardon, a Zurich-based major manufacturer of food and tobacco packaging products. "Both products complement each other well. We are taking advantage of BW for analysis and production reporting, while BusinessObjects is ideal for our needs in desktop reporting, web functionality, and remote analysis."

BusinessObjects gives users of SAP BW additional DSS functionality including: -0-

--   Web-based access and distribution of SAP data
--   Integration of data outside BW
--   Offline report analysis
--   Report server capabilities including scheduling and distribution

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"This certification by SAP and our companies' joint customer successes demonstrate that BusinessObjects brings significant business intelligence value to SAP Business Information Warehouse users," said Bernard Liautaud, president and chief executive officer of Business Objects. "Our products' strengths in working with enterprise data make Business Objects an essential part of this evolving ERP marketplace. We are committed to serving this market, as we are committed to delivering measurable business benefits to SAP customers."

Optimized for SAP BW, the SAP-certified BusinessObjects interface will offer customers the benefits of ODBO-based data queries including: -0-

--   Leverage of SAP BW security and metadata -- by utilizing SAP
     preferred and supported access method (ODBO interface), users of
     BusinessObjects are able to take advantage of SAP BW security
     features and can easily access BW metadata.

--   Interactive OLAP analysis -- users of BusinessObjects will be
     able to perform high-speed "slice and dice" and drill-down
     analysis directly against SAP BW InfoCubes. This analysis will
     let users take full advantage of SAP BW OLAP environment and
     performance-enhancing features.

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"It makes sense that business applications vendors such as SAP are now extending their enterprise applications to address end-user requirements for decision support," said Henry Morris, program director at International Data Corporation (IDC). "Companies adopting the Business Information Warehouse will seek to make the business information content more widely accessible by means of additional end user tools that complement SAP's Business Explorer. SAP's certification of BusinessObjects for BW improves Business Objects' positioning to meet the advanced query, reporting, and analysis needs of BW customers."

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools. Business Objects products provide non-technical business users with access to information stored in data warehouses, data marts, and packaged business applications. Business Objects provides a complete suite of decision support tools including query, reporting, online analytical processing, data mining, and DSS administration for both client/server and internet environments. Business Objects has sold more than 955,000 licenses to over 7,000 organizations in more than 60 countries worldwide.

Business Objects may be reached by phone at 408/953-6000 or on the World Wide Web at http://www.businessobjects.com. The Company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbol BOBJY.

Note to Editors: SAP, R/3, SAP Business Information Warehouse, SAP BW, and all SAP product and service names herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG. BusinessObjects is a 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.