Customers Worldwide Praise Business Objects Acquisition of Crystal Decisions.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 8, 2004

Customers Look Forward to Benefits of Lower Total Cost

of Ownership and Complete Business Intelligence

Product Line from One Provider

The business intelligence (BI) market has changed dramatically in the past decade. Once a departmental technology used for helping companies access small volumes of information, BI is now a mission-critical, enterprise-wide solution for helping organizations manage enterprise performance. Given these changes, customers today demand a BI platform that provides proven, best-of-breed technology for all categories of business intelligence, from an industry leader with the resources and focus necessary to make any size BI deployment successful.

With the acquisition of Crystal Decisions, Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ)(Euronext Paris ISIN code FR0004026250 - BOB) is now in an even stronger position to meet the needs of today's BI customer. For the past several months, representatives from Business Objects and Crystal Decisions have briefed dozens of customers around the world on the company's product roadmap and vision for integrating the two product lines. Feedback from the briefing sessions has been very positive, and customers from every industry have expressed enthusiasm for how the new Business Objects will benefit their company. The following are some of the comments from these customers:

Aetna

"At Aetna we use both Business Objects and Crystal Decisions to access and analyze information, particularly in our Enterprise Data Warehouse environment," said Richard Ingraham, Business Systems Manager at Aetna Data Management and Services.

"We view the combination of these two companies as a benefit to Aetna: since we are already significant users of both technologies, the combined synergies will allow our business partners to have an even more powerful business intelligence solution."

Huntington National Bank

"At Huntington National Bank, we made a decision to standardize on Crystal Decisions for enterprise reporting in October of 2002," said Joe Gottron, executive vice president and chief information officer at Huntington National Bank. "Our deployment has been a growing success, and is giving decision makers across the company an important tool for helping them reach their business goals. We look forward to taking advantage of some of the ad-hoc and dashboard capabilities in the Business Objects solutions. This will make our business intelligence strategy that much more powerful in our quest to better serve both our external and internal customers."

Fox Filmed Entertainment

"Today we use technology from Crystal Decisions as our standard for enterprise reporting, and Business Objects as our ad-hoc query tool for some departments in the company," said Charles Castleberry, assistant director, architecture, at Fox Filmed Entertainment. "We feel our investment in Crystal Decisions solutions is in an even stronger position as a result of the acquisition. By teaming up two strong companies and forming an industry leader, we will have more BI capabilities than before, and a stronger vendor to turn to for services, support, and a long term relationship."

Jenny Craig, Inc.

"Jenny Craig has a successful BusinessObjects Enterprise 6 deployment that helps us better understand the needs of clients, improve business performance, and manage 660 client centers worldwide," said Eric Triplett, Business Objects administrator at Jenny Craig. "As a Crystal Decisions user for our enterprise reporting needs, we are excited about the prospect of the combination of these two companies, and what we see as the opportunity to gain even more value from our business intelligence deployment."

Lands' End 

"Lands' End uses analytics from Business Objects to improve supply chain efficiency, customer relationships, and overall bottom line performance," said Frank Giannantonio, CIO at Lands' End. "Today we use Business Objects and Crystal Decisions in several departments throughout the company, and look forward to the benefits that will come from bringing this together from one provider. The ability to use Business Objects or Crystal Decisions technology is extremely valuable to our business."

Maritz Travel Company

"As a leading travel management services company, Maritz Travel organizes more than 2,000 events annually for over 500,000 attendees, and business intelligence plays a key role in making sure these events are highly successful and meet our clients' goals," said Neal Thompson, director, strategic business technology at Maritz Travel Company. "Today we use Business Objects and Crystal Decisions to provide detailed information both internally to our management team, as well as externally to thousands of clients around the world. By combining these two companies we will be able to provide an even more powerful BI solution to our clients, at a lower total cost of ownership."

MasterCard

"At MasterCard, business intelligence plays a vital role in helping us deliver high quality service and information tools to our employees and member financial institutions," said John Meister, vice president, at MasterCard International. "Today we use both Business Objects and Crystal Decisions to help our company and our member banks receive the right information, at the right time, so that they can operation more efficiently, and ultimately deliver better service to our end customers. We view this acquisition to be a positive for our company, as this brings together two important information technology tools at MasterCard under one key partner for us."

Zurich Insurance North America 

"Zurich Insurance has been a customer of both Business Objects and Crystal Decisions for several years," said Frank Colletti, director of technical services for Zurich North America's Corporate Customer business unit. "These two technologies have had an important positive impact on our business -- by allowing us to track, understand, and manage our operations internally, and by helping us to provide a risk management extranet, which was an industry first, to our clients around the world. Following the consolidation of these two companies into one software provider, we will expect to benefit from a lower total cost of ownership and the opportunity to work with an industry leader."

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company. 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 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 24,000 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 www.businessobjects.com

BusinessObjects 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.