Business Objects Launches Latin America Initiative; Names Joseph H. Brand, Jr., Director of Latin America.

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 16, 1996--Business Objects, a leading provider of enterprise decision support tools, today announced its entry into the Latin American marketplace through the creation of a distribution network in Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia. Heading up this initiative is Joseph H. Brand, Jr., who is also responsible for managing the already established Mexican distributor, Nyx Consultores.

"As an emerging market, Latin American countries have looked toward high technology to give them a competitive advantage," said Brand. "As these countries rapidly evolve from a mainframe-based model to a client/server-based distributed computing environment, an enterprise decision support solution like BUSINESSOBJECTS is well positioned to capitalize on this transition. We already have a strong foothold into the Mexican market, and we believe we can greatly expand this success through our distribution partners in Latin America."

To date, Business Objects has signed agreements with Hoister in Brazil, Pampa Bytes SRL in Argentina, and Unibase in Colombia to market, distribute, and support the BUSINESSOBJECTS product line in their respective countries. Each distributor has expertise with client/server environments and relational database technology P key attributes needed to successfully sell and support BUSINESSOBJECTS. Business Objects is also pursuing similar distribution agreements in Chile, Venezuela, Peru, and other Latin American countries.

BUSINESSOBJECTS is the industry's leading integrated query, reporting, and on-line analytical processing (OLAP) tool. It is built around an industry-unique, component-based architecture that integrates all major decision support system (DSS) functions into a single tool. BUSINESSOBJECTS provides end users with the ability to easily access and analyze data stored in corporate databases and data warehouses, while giving IS the control and ease of deployment required for delivering the solution enterprise wide.

Latin American Distributors Endorse BUSINESSOBJECTS

"We believe that BUSINESSOBJECTS is an excellent product for our marketplace because it is end-user centric with an elegant interface that hides the complexity of the underlying database and eliminates the need for constant IS support," said Nicolas Casariego, socio gerente of Pampa Bytes SRL, Buenos Aires, Argentina. "With BUSINESSOBJECTS, we will be able to meet the demand of our existing clients and build a portfolio of new clients that were once unreachable."

"We believe that BUSINESSOBJECTS is a step ahead of its competitors," said Gustavo Betancourt, president of Colombia's Unibase Habilitacion Tecnologica. "The functionality and strength of BUSINESSOBJECTS far exceeds our expectations, and we plan to use it to pursue new client opportunities."

"We are excited about the opportunity to work with Business Objects because it's a market leader and offers an excellent product set," said Antonio Paulo Rihl, director of Brazil's Hoister. "The time is right to bring end-user decision support to our marketplace. Offering a product like BUSINESSOBJECTS is a natural next step for us and will help to consolidate the work we have already done in the client/server world."

Latin American and Mexican customers currently using BUSINESSOBJECTS include:

Colombia: BP Colombia; Mexico: Aurrera, Bancomer, Banca Serfin, Nabisco, Pemex,

Suburbia, Televisa, and Telmex; Brazil: Telebras.

About Joseph H. Brand, Jr.

Joseph H. Brand, Jr. comes to Business Objects from SunSoft where he was the intercontinental channels development manager responsible for managing ICON channels in Latin America, Asia/Pacific, the Middle East, and South Africa. Prior to that, he held software development positions at IBM and Hughes Aircraft. Brand holds a master of business administration degree from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a bachelor of science in computer science from San Francisco State University.

About Business Objects

Business Objects (NASDAQ: BOBJY) is a leading provider of enterprise decision support tools that deliver access to data stored in corporate databases, data warehouses, and packaged applications. The company pioneered the market for business-intelligent decision support tools in 1990 with the introduction of its flagship product, BUSINESSOBJECTS, the first decision support tool to use a "semantic layer" to map complex database schemas to a business representation understandable by mainstream business users.

Business Objects generated over $60M in revenue in 1995, concluding its fifth consecutive year of more than 100% revenue growth. BUSINESSOBJECTS has been licensed in more than 40 countries to over 2,600 customer sites and 130,000 users worldwide. Business Objects partners with more than 350 leading third-party vendors, including Arbor Software, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Informix, Microsoft, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Prism, Red Brick, Sun, and Sybase. Strategic resellers include Bull, Digital, Fujitsu, NCR, Price Waterhouse, Sequent, SHL, Siemens Nixdorf, Toshiba, and Unisys. More information on Business Objects can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.businessobjects.com. -0- Note to Editors: BUSINESSOBJECTS is a trademark of Business Objects S.A. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

CONTACT: BUSINESS OBJECTS

Tracy Eiler, 408/864-2085

[e-mail]

or

Joseph H. Brand, Jr., 408/864-2064

[e-mail]

(Latin American Press and Distributor Inquiries)