Business Objects Announces Support for New Informatica Product Family: PowerCenter, PowerMart 4.0, PowerCapture and PowerPlugs.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 21, 1997--Business Objects (NASDAQ:BOBJY) today announced support for Informatica's family of next generation products and technology for enabling distributed data warehousing.

The Informatica Product family consists of PowerCenter, a new software product for networking multiple data marts into an enterprise data warehouse; PowerMart 4.0, an enhanced version of the market-leading tool for building and managing dependent data marts; PowerCapture, the first data mart tool to automate the capture of incremental changes to operational data in real time, without adversely affecting on-line performance; and PowerPlugs, third-party software programs that "plug-in" additional functionality to Informatica products through open APIs.

Business Objects provides direct access to Informatica's metadata via its flagship product, BusinessObjects, the industry's leading integrated query, reporting and online analytical processing (OLAP) tool. Informatica's flagship product, PowerMart, helps companies get data marts built more quickly, and Business Objects helps them deliver the information to end users. Due to the tight metadata integration, the two companies help customers get their data marts built and deployed much faster, thus speeding the development of a decision support system (DSS) solution.

This joint solution enables IS professionals to more effectively maintain and manage the data warehouse and data mart while relieving them of providing end users with ad-hoc reports, and helps end users to access more reliable data and use it to make informed business decisions.

Informatica's Power Center 1.0 enables customers to network individual data marts together and centrally manage them for distributed data warehousing across the enterprise, thus streamlining the process by which end users get access to data they need to make business decisions. A main component of PowerCenter is the global data mart repository (GDR), which stores and shares metadata across the enterprise. Power Mart 4.0 has been enhanced with a new interface as well as new features that make it easier for IS departments to create data marts.

"Our customers tell us that easy access to current data throughout their organizations is a crucial need. And we think that Informatica is addressing a real need by helping companies deploy individual data marts incrementally and then network them together into an enterprise-wide data warehouse," said Peter Buscemi, vice president of Americas marketing at Business Objects. "With this next step in an already successful partnership, Business Objects and Informatica will make it even easier for end users throughout the enterprise to get the up-to-the-minute data they need, thus streamlining the process by which end users get access to data they require to make more informed strategic business decisions."

"Making relevant, timely information readily available to our customers has been Informatica's driving focus from day one, and the support of leading end-user query and reporting tool vendors such as Business Objects makes for a powerful solution," said Gaurav Dhillon, CEO of Informatica. "Customers can now leverage best-of-breed products from Informatica and Business Objects to incrementally build distributed data warehouses as their decision support needs grow, using front-end tools to intelligently maximize their business information along the way."

About Informatica Corp.

Informatica Corp., founded in 1993 and located in Menlo Park, Calif., is recognized as the pioneering vendor that launched the data mart revolution through its introduction of the PowerMart suite, software technology that sets a new standard for accelerated data warehouse design, implementation and management. Today, PowerMart is the leading second-generation technology for building and managing data warehouses and data marts.

The product recently captured The Data Warehousing Institute's "Best Practices" Award for Data Extraction, Cleansing, and Transformation, and has been recognized by Information, and has been recognized by InformationWeek as one of the "Important Products of the Year" for 1996. The company has also won recognition from Database Programming & Design as a database industry influencer to watch in 1997, from The Red Herring as one of the "Top 50 Private Companies," from Computerworld as one of the "Top 100 Hot Emerging Companies," and from Upside as one of the "Top 100 Startups."

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 630,000 licenses to over 5,400 organizations in more than 60 countries worldwide.

Business Objects may be reached by phone at 408/953-6000 or on the worldwide web at http://www.businessobjects.com . The company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbol BOBJY. -0-

Note to Editors: 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.

CONTACT: Business Objects

Danielle Dawson, 408/953-6108

or

Informatica Corp.

Karen Dabaghian, 650/473-6234