Business Objects Recognized as a Tier One Vendor in Enterprise ETL Tools Market by Independent Research Firm.

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Research Report Recognizes Business Objects Based on Its Strong Current Product Offering, Strategy, and Market Presence

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ)(Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that it has been named as a Tier One enterprise extract, transform, and load (ETL) tool vendor in the December 2004 Forrester Wave(TM) report, titled "How to Evaluate Enterprise ETL." Business Objects was among a select group of companies invited to participate in this report, which rates vendors based on their current product offering, strategy, and overall market presence. The report ranked a total of 14 vendors in the market and recognized BusinessObjects(TM) Data Integrator, the company's ETL solution, for its high level of scalability, advanced connectivity, and collaborative capabilities.

In the report, Forrester notes that reasonable license prices for ETL tools are important, especially given the current economy. Therefore, it is increasingly important to find a solution that has a relatively low price point, yet still performs adequately. In this area, which Forrester calls "Enterprise ETL on a Budget," Business Objects was the highest rated ETL vendor for its current offering. BusinessObjects Data Integrator is among the group of ETL solutions that provides a price to performance ratio that is more favorable than solutions from other vendors.

"Being named a Tier One vendor in the Forrester ETL Tools Wave report is significant validation that BusinessObjects Data Integrator provides customers with a strong solution to help meet their growing data integration and business intelligence needs," said Lance Walter, vice president of product marketing at Business Objects. "The right data infrastructure is critical to successful business intelligence and performance management initiatives. Business Objects is focused on delivering enterprise-class data integration to our customers so that they can deliver timely, accurate, and trusted information to end-users."

For the Forrester ETL Tools Wave, vendors were graded against 43 criteria based on detailed surveys, product demonstrations, customer interviews, and the analyst's existing knowledge of the ETL tools market. Plotting the Forrester Wave is a purely objective and mathematical exercise, as each attribute is scored on a scale of 0 to 5. These attributes in turn are weighted appropriately and rolled up to an overall average. The Forrester Wave contains a great deal of objective data to help companies make good product selection decisions. All products and services are evaluated in three dimensions -- current offerings, strategy, and market presence. Vendor solutions must have strong scores in both the current offering and strategy dimensions to place highly in the Forrester Wave.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company. Business intelligence enables organizations to track, understand, and manage enterprise performance. The company's solutions leverage the information that is stored in an array of corporate databases, enterprise resource planning (ERP), and customer relationship management (CRM) systems.

Popular uses of BI include enterprise reporting, management dashboards and scorecards, customer intelligence applications, financial reporting, and both customer and partner extranets. These solutions enable companies to gain visibility into their business, acquire and retain profitable customers, reduce costs, optimize the supply chain, increase productivity, and improve financial performance.

In December 2003, Business Objects completed the acquisition of Crystal Decisions, the leader in enterprise reporting. The combined product line includes software for reporting, query and analysis, performance management, analytic applications, and data integration. In addition, Business Objects offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects has more than 29,000 customers in over 80 countries. The company's stock is traded under the ticker symbols NASDAQ: BOBJ and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB). It is included in the SBF 120 and IT CAC 50 French stock market indexes. Business Objects can be reached at 408-953-6000 and http://www.businessobjects.com.

Business Objects, the Business Objects logo, and BusinessObjects are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects S.A. or its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries.