Business Objects and Data Advantage Group Announce Technology Alliance; Delivering Enterprise-wide Visibility and Metadata Analysis within Heterogeneous Environments.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif. and SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 20, 2003

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, and Data Advantage Group, a leading provider of information resource management software, today announced the signing of a technology alliance. As part of this alliance, the two companies will integrate BusinessObjects(TM) Enterprise 6 with Data Advantage Group's MetaCenter Platform to help organizations that are struggling to manage metadata from disparate tools and technologies.

BusinessObjects Enterprise 6 delivers the industry's most integrated suite of business intelligence products, encompassing data integration, a BI platform, and analytic applications. Enterprise 6 provides easy metadata management and exchange between BusinessObjects Data Integrator and the BI platform. Data Integrator provides real-time and batch extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL). It can easily exchange metadata with third-party tools through the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) standard, as well directly through application interfaces.

MetaCenter is the market leading metadata management platform for providing solutions to organizations looking to better understand the interdependencies among, and the data lineage flow across, their entire application infrastructure. While companies are beginning to standardize on a single end-to-end solution for their BI needs, many companies continue to work with disparate BI tools and transactional, database, data integration, data quality, and data modeling technologies. Using open standards such as CWM and XML, Data Advantage Group's MetaCenter Platform empowers these companies by providing a single real-time window into their complete information system environment. The alliance announced today complements the BusinessObjects Enterprise 6 end-to-end BI suite integration by providing an additional degree of support for organizations working with heterogeneous sets of metadata across various vendor specific repositories.

"Companies are struggling to understand the context of their enterprise data," said Sachin Chawla, vice president of data integration technology at Business Objects. "The integration of Enterprise 6 with the MetaCenter Platform enhances the ability of our customers to gain a deep understanding of their data -- increasing their operational efficiency and profit, while minimizing business risk."

"Today's announcement builds upon the long-standing relationship between Data Advantage Group and Business Objects, " said Geoff Rayner, CEO of Data Advantage Group. "The integration of our MetaCenter Platform across the full range of Business Objects products will provide visibility into the metadata within the entire suite of BusinessObjects Enterprise 6, including reporting and data integration. This will especially strengthen BusinessObjects Data Integrator as an enterprise-class data integration (DI) platform that organizations can standardize upon for their batch and real-time data movement needs by using open standards to extend metadata sharing and exchange beyond the BI and DI platforms."

About Data Advantage Group

Data Advantage Group is the leading provider of information resource management software. Data Advantage Group's MetaCenter(TM) Platform is a 100% browser-based, real-time metadata analytics platform with an integrated corporate information asset repository that empowers both business and technical users to collaborate and easily research, locate, and manage enterprise metadata assets. Data Advantage Group's clients include: Allmerica Financial, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, Boeing, Cable & Wireless, Diageo, Fidelity Investments, The Life Insurance Division of Pacific Life & Annuity, SE Banken and VW Credit. Visit www.dag.com for more information.

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 18,000 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.

BusinessObjects is a trademark of Business Objects S.A. in the United States and/or other countries. MetaCenter is a trademark of Data Advantage Group, Inc. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.