Business Objects Secures Global Contract with AstraZeneca for Business Intelligence.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 29, 2003

Pharmaceutical Giant to Deploy End-to-End Business Objects

Suite Across the Enterprise

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that AstraZeneca PLC (NYSE:AZN), one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, has signed a global contract with Business Objects to extend its business intelligence solutions across the company to support enterprise performance management. With this new contract, AstraZeneca has purchased the end-to-end product line from Business Objects, including BusinessObjects(TM), WebIntelligence(R), BusinessObjects Data Integrator, and BusinessObjects Application Foundation. Using Business Objects solutions, AstraZeneca will be able to track, understand, and manage key business metrics in order to improve operational efficiency, cut costs, and increase competitive advantage.

AstraZeneca expects to see a significant return on this latest investment in Business Objects business intelligence solutions within the next 18 months. "With best-of-breed technology from data integration to the business intelligence front-end, Business Objects provides AstraZeneca with one solution to access and deliver key data to all corporate decision makers, improving their ability to manage business performance," said Steve Atkinson, enterprise software manager for AstraZeneca. "This integrated and dynamic view of our business will help us to achieve operational excellence and maintain leadership in a competitive industry."

The selection of Business Objects is the latest step in AstraZeneca's relationship with Business Objects and the company's adoption of business intelligence technology. More than 5,000 research and development (R&D) staff at AstraZeneca already use Business Objects business intelligence solutions to access, analyze, and share R&D project information including new product development and clinical trials across the company's seven global "Centers of Excellence." This has helped AstraZeneca to accelerate the time to market for new products. The new agreement with Business Objects allows AstraZeneca to broaden the use of Business Objects business intelligence solutions across its 55,000 employees worldwide.

AstraZeneca will expand its use of BusinessObjects, the integrated query, reporting, and analysis solution for the enterprise, and WebIntelligence, the web-based BI solution from Business Objects, to gather and monitor information across core business operations including R&D, Manufacturing, Finance, and Marketing. AstraZeneca will also implement BusinessObjects Data Integrator, the real-time and batch integration tool, to simplify and accelerate data access, integration, and delivery across the company.

In addition, AstraZeneca has purchased BusinessObjects Application Foundation, an analytic framework for developing and deploying analytic applications. Using Application Foundation, AstraZeneca can build management dashboards with at-a-glance displays that show the status of key performance indicators across the organization.

"AstraZeneca's commitment to Business Objects is further proof of the importance of business intelligence to large companies today," said John Olsen, chief operating officer at Business Objects. "In a fast changing economy, where businesses need greater visibility across all enterprise functions, AstraZeneca is using business intelligence to proactively monitor information to ensure the entire organization achieves optimum performance."

About AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca is a major international healthcare business engaged in the research, development, manufacture and marketing of prescription pharmaceuticals and the supply of healthcare services. It is one of the top five pharmaceutical companies in the world with healthcare sales of over $17.8 billion and leading positions in sales of gastrointestinal, oncology, anesthesia (including pain management), cardiovascular, central nervous system (CNS) and respiratory products. AstraZeneca is listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (Global and European) as well as the FTSE4Good Index.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading provider of enterprise business intelligence (BI) solutions. Business Objects 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 management dashboards and scorecards, enterprise performance management applications, customer intelligence applications, enterprise reporting, 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.

Business Objects provides the industry's most integrated business intelligence suite, called BusinessObjects Enterprise 6. This suite includes the industry's best web query, reporting, and analysis; the most advanced and complete suite of analytic applications; and the best connectivity to packaged applications.

Business Objects has more than 17,500 customers in over 80 countries. The company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbols NASDAQ: BOBJ and Euronext Paris (Euroclear code 12074). 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 www.businessobjects.com.

Note to Editors: BusinessObjects is a trademark and WebIntelligence is a registered trademark of Business Objects S.A. in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.