Business Objects and Prentice Technologies Announce Strategic Global Alliance.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 3, 2001

Partnership Brings E-Business Intelligence To ASPs, BI Extranet

Enables Customers to Make Better Business Decisions

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, and Prentice Technologies, Inc., a market-leading application service provider (ASP), today announced an alliance to provide e-business intelligence capabilities as part of Prentice's application portfolio. The alliance will allow Prentice to offer an enhanced view of business critical data to its customers via the web enabling better business decisions to be made throughout the enterprise. Prentice will also be able to resell a BI extranet solution to its Fortune 1000 customers.

Through integration of WebIntelligence(R), a Business Objects integrated query, reporting, and online analytical processing (OLAP) solution for the web, Prentice customers will be able to access, analyze, and share information throughout their entire enterprise, as well as from existing applications hosted by Prentice including J.D. Edwards and Siebel Systems, Inc. Additionally, Prentice customers will be able to share dynamic reports and analysis with their suppliers, customers, and affiliates, through a BI extranet hosted by Prentice. This complete solution offers customers reduced total cost of ownership, quality service delivery from the Prentice consulting team, and access to significant new capabilities for making critical business decisions.

Weisman Enterprises, Inc. will be the first e-commerce customer to use the BI extranet solution from Prentice and Business Objects. Weisman Enterprises, Inc., provides day-to-day management of auxiliary services such as vending and waste, along with invoice and commission consolidation operations. Executing hundreds of thousands of transactions between multiple vendors, partners, and customers annually, Weisman has a heightened need to attain and to provide its partners a clear, accessible view of business data. Business Objects technologies uniquely afford Weisman, and its partners, effortless access to this data.

"Prentice has a proven track record as an ASP, and we are comfortable with their ability to support Weisman's complex extranet requirements. As a customer since 1999, we naturally looked to Prentice to host our solution," said Diane Chihi, chief financial officer for Weisman Enterprises, Inc. "The combination of Business Objects and Prentice technologies will offer our customers including Target, K-Mart, and The Home Depot, with real-time access to business data enabling them to view their most recent activity."

"By integrating Business Objects technologies into our existing applications portfolio, we are leading in hosting BI extranets," said Shawn Richmond, CEO of Prentice. "We think Business Objects is a natural fit with the customer resource management and enterprise resource planning components of our ASP package, and our customers certainly see the significance of its BI capabilities."

Prentice's ASP model is unique in that it approaches traditional service delivery channels, such as consulting firms, systems integrators, and value-added resellers by partnering and extending their service offering, rather than competing with them. Prentice participates in a more traditional value chain for delivery and focuses exclusively on managing the applications infrastructure.

"Partnering with Prentice enables Business Objects customers to use business intelligence solutions via the ASP model," said Mark Tice, group vice president of global alliances at Business Objects. "More and more ASPs are reaping the benefits of providing customers with business intelligence capabilities in their application portfolios. As a leader in providing BI extranets, Business Objects alliance with Prentice underscores our ability to partner with pure play ASPs."

About Prentice Technologies

Prentice Technologies, Inc. is an Enterprise Application Service Provider (E-ASP) with proven experience. Founded in 1996, Prentice provides tier-1 business applications to thousands of corporate users across North America and Europe. Prentice focuses on traditional middle market customers, with current "live" clients ranging in size from $35M to $1B in annual revenue. Powered by best-of-breed software from industry-leading vendors, the Prentice solution provides an integrated suite of software, services, and rapid implementation templates to address the high-end IT requirements of its middle-market customers. http://www.prenticetechnologies.com.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions. The company coined the term e-business intelligence in 1998 to describe the intersection of business intelligence and the internet. Using e-business intelligence, organizations can access, analyze, and share information in intranet, extranet, and e-business environments. In intranets, the company's products provide employees with information to make better business decisions, and are used in environments ranging from workgroups of 20 users to enterprise deployments exceeding 20,000. In the extranet environment, the company is pioneering the use of e-BI in applications that allow organizations to build stronger relationships by linking customers, partners, and suppliers via the internet. In addition, the company's products can improve the performance of an e-business by providing reporting and analysis against the ever-expanding amount of transaction and profile data that is collected each day throughout the world wide web.

Founded in 1990, Business Objects pioneered the modern business intelligence industry by inventing and patenting a "semantic layer" that insulates users from the technical complexity of database systems. Today, the company has over 12,400 customers in more than 80 countries. The company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbols NASDAQ: BOBJ and Euronext Paris: code Euroclear France 12074, and 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 of Business Objects SA. WebIntelligence is a registered trademark of Business Objects SA.