Business Objects Announces Industry’s First Intelligence Platform

Industry Leader Unveils BusinessObjects XI 3.0, First Unified Offering that Brings Together All Information, for All People, on One Platform

SAN JOSE, Calif., PARIS and WALLDORF, Germany .— Business Objects, an SAP company (NYSE: SAP) and the world’s leading provider of business performance optimization solutions, today announced BusinessObjects™ XI 3.0. A single, enterprise-scale platform, BusinessObjects XI 3.0 breaks the barriers of traditional business intelligence (BI), helping to ensure that all people connected with an organization can have access to the information they need to make a difference. Information makes employees more productive, partners and suppliers more effective, and customers happier and more loyal. BusinessObjects XI 3.0 allows organizations to harness this performance advantage.

“I expect that BusinessObjects XI 3.0 will bring new insights and improved decision making to our organization,” said Yvonne Jones, manager of data management at Unisys, a leading global IT services and technology company. “Our employees should now always be connected to powerful BI capabilities wherever and whenever they need them.”

All the Right Information
Business intelligence has traditionally focused on the most easily obtainable data: process-centric ‘structured’ information – numbers and text stored in internal databases – analyzed by a select group of data analysts and shared among slices of isolated user communities. With BusinessObjects XI 3.0, all information will be accessible to people throughout the organization and their extended business network. According to a recent survey of 154 global C-level executives conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and commissioned by Business Objects, less than one in 10 corporate executives believe they have the right information needed to make critical business decisions. BusinessObjects XI 3.0 gives businesspeople the confidence to know their data is clean, and the ability to link it back to its source, so information is easily auditable, accurate and trustworthy.

BusinessObjects XI 3.0 is the first and only BI platform with integrated text analysis, allowing the thoughts and opinions of customers and other people found in unstructured sources such as the Web, notes fields and emails to be easily incorporated into business intelligence and decision making. BusinessObjects XI 3.0 also provides the first platform that delivers BI-ready consumable external information on demand, from the de facto leader in software-as-a-service (SaaS) BI. For example, by using BusinessObjects XI 3.0-ready reports and metrics from sources such as Thomson Financial and Dun & Bradstreet, organizations can compare and track key performance metrics against their direct competitors and the overall market.

Access for All People
The full spectrum of BI capabilities provided by BusinessObjects XI 3.0 – from reporting, query and analysis, dashboards and visualization to predictive analysis – helps ensure all people get the right interface and level of interactivity for their role. Business Objects has developed the next-generation user experience, including search and exploration, mobile BI and desktop-based metrics, to dramatically extend the power and freedom of BI to a far wider community.

BusinessObjects XI 3.0 includes significant updates to the portfolio, such as:

* Crystal Reports® 2008, the industry de facto reporting standard, the only reporting solution to embed Flash and Flex for more interactivity and integrating BI with business processes
* Web Intelligence®, the most advanced query, reporting and analysis tool for SAP and non-SAP environments, now for the first time providing users with both online and offline access
* Xcelsius® 2008, a point-and-click data visualization tool designed to create interactive, shareable dashboards – now with easier and more powerful analytic creation
* Polestar, a new tool that combines the simplicity and speed of search with the trust and analytical power of BI to provide immediate answers to business questions
* BI Widgets, a new capability that puts personalized metrics directly on people’s desktop, so they can monitor key performance indicators and access the most up-to-date information available
* Voyager, an OLAP data exploration tool designed specifically for financial and business analysts – now with enhanced multi-dimensional analysis and visualization
* Mobile, a solution for remote access to favorite BI reports, metrics and real-time data with a single click of a wireless device – including enhanced alerts and disconnected analysis mode
* Live Office, which allows simple embedding and updating of new data in Microsoft Office Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations, with even greater platform support
* Dashboard Builder, which provides instant insight into business activities by viewing all business intelligence content together in one consolidated dashboard view, now with enhanced interfaces and usability workflows
* Enhanced support for SAP users including improved performance, increased support for SAP metadata and broader integration for SAP applications

One Platform for Complete, Trustworthy, Agile BI
With BusinessObjects XI 3.0, IT can cost-effectively serve the demands of the business, delivering all the right information to everyone who needs it. A single intelligence platform delivers common services such as information management, metadata management, security and auditing.

New with BusinessObjects XI 3.0, BusinessObjects Data Services combines two market-leading technologies, Data Integrator and Data Quality, in one enterprise-class solution – an industry first. Now customers can be assured they are gaining the most accurate and trustworthy information with the fastest time to delivery. A single product provides significant benefits. For example:

* CIOs can simplify their IT infrastructure and lower total cost of ownership by leveraging the same skills across the entire data management environment
* Business users can gain a competitive advantage by making accurate business decisions with all types of data – structured or unstructured, global or local
* Organizations can achieve operational excellence through one application for building data quality and integration programs

BusinessObjects XI 3.0 includes advanced support for BI federation, allowing IT to deliver custom BI deployments while maintaining global consistency. The BI federation in BusinessObjects XI 3.0 also provides a unique capability for organizations to combine multiple, departmental deployments into a single, more powerful, lower cost enterprise–wide BI framework without disrupting the value of existing systems. To further simplify deployment, the BusinessObjects XI 3.0 intelligence platform can be hosted in the manner of the customer’s choice, either on-premise, on-demand or a combination of the two.

“Traditional business data is no longer enough; customers need the whole picture to realize the promise of more powerful decision making,” said Marge Breya, executive vice-president, business intelligence platform at Business Objects. “Today we announce a business intelligence platform that is up to the task. Every person in an organization can now have trusted and immediate access to business information, just as easily as they do to the Internet. BusinessObjects XI 3.0 offers full-spectrum BI capabilities for everyone in the organization with the information they need, when they need it. The next generation of intelligence has arrived.”

Availability
BusinessObjects XI 3.0 is currently planned to be generally available in Q1, 2008. BusinessObjects XI 3.0 Mobile and BusinessObjects XI 3.0 Polestar are currently planned to be generally available later in 2008.