Business Objects Announces Next Version of Industry’s Most Complete and Unified Business Intelligence Platform

BusinessObjects™ XI 3.1 Delivers on Company’s Commitment to Openness With Expanded Support for Heterogeneous Computing Environments

New Version Provides Customers With a Comprehensive, Trusted View Across All Corporate Data

SAN JOSE, Calif. and PARIS - Business Objects, an SAP company (NYSE: SAP) and the world’s leading provider of solutions that optimize business performance, today announced BusinessObjects™ XI 3.1, the industry’s first unified business intelligence (BI) platform delivering all information to all people on one platform. BusinessObjects XI 3.1 gives customers even more flexibility and power to access all information—regardless of format, shape, size or location—enabling everyone to make more confident decisions based on trusted, reliable information. Consistently executing against its commitment to openness with a BI platform that supports heterogeneous computing environments, BusinessObjects XI 3.1 now offers integration with data sources from a variety of vendors, including HP, Microsoft, Netezza and Oracle. BusinessObjects XI 3.1 also offers simplified access to transactional data, as well as increased speed and scalability with new native support for 64-bit architecture.

Many organizations today have heterogeneous IT environments, which include various applications, databases or operating system and hardware platforms—all generating data that companies need to access and turn into intelligence that fuels their business. BusinessObjects XI 3.1 addresses this need by providing integration with a wide variety of data sources, including Oracle enterprise applications and databases—such as the latest Oracle database versions. With direct connectivity to information locked within their Oracle systems, organizations can consolidate and transform Oracle data into reports that can be shared for collaborative decision-making. Business Objects will enable users to make the most of information stored in PeopleSoft Enterprise, JD Edwards EnterpriseOne and Siebel applications.

“Our research into factors that lead to pervasive use of business intelligence suggests that providing self-service access to all available, relevant information, which can originate in different internal or external systems, is key to BI diffusion,” said Dan Vesset, program vice president, IDC. “Organizations should include in their BI software evaluation processes solutions that provide end user access through multiple query, reporting and analysis tools, and at the same time support functionality for structured data and unstructured content integration from multiple sources.”

“Our customers assemble a range of solutions and platforms designed to meet their unique business operational needs,” said Allan Pym, vice president, business development, APOS Systems Inc. “This new version of the Business Objects platform enables customers to integrate and utilize those various IT assets. We participated in beta tests for BusinessObjects XI 3.1 and believe it provides our joint customers with great opportunities to better leverage enterprise data and their diverse solutions, which will yield better business decisions.”

The Business Objects BI platform provides connectivity to all widely-used IT systems. Customers can seamlessly leverage information contained in data warehouses solutions from HP Neoview, Netezza and Teradata. The solution also integrates with Microsoft platform components like Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008, as well as Microsoft Sharepoint Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.

“With the launch of Business Objects XI 3.0 earlier this year, we delivered the industry’s first intelligence platform,” said Marge Breya, executive vice president and general manager, Business Intelligence Platform, Business Objects. “The enhancements in this new version show continued execution against our roadmap and demonstrate that we are open to any application, infrastructure or data source. Our customers can eliminate ‘knowledge shadows’ in their organizations by giving more people broader access to the information they need to get their jobs done. Furthermore, we are empowering our Oracle customers with the industry’s leading BI platform, enabling them to harness data from their Oracle applications and sources and use it to optimize business performance.”

Simplified Access to Transaction Data for All People
BusinessObjects™ Voyager, software that enables easy exploration of OLAP data, was launched last year as part of the Business Objects BI platform. With BusinessObjects XI 3.1, Business Objects introduces new visualization options that bring business users and analysts closer to the insight they need to make more informed business decisions on rich and complex data. Voyager aggregates transactional data from OLAP backends and presents it within graphical interfaces, allowing users to more easily explore the data from different perspectives. Using new box or scatter plots, business users can analyze, slice, dice and visualize sales data by region, product, account executive and time period. This multidimensional insight paints a more holistic picture of their business, allowing users—whether they are financial analysts or district sales managers—to make better decisions and create smarter business strategies.

Improved Speed and Scalability
Anticipating customers’ increasing use of 64-bit architecture for business applications, the Business Objects BI platform now offers native support for 64-bit architecture, enabling customers to handle larger data sets and speed up the delivery of accurate information to all users.

About Business Objects
Business Objects, an SAP company, transforms the way the world works by connecting people, information and businesses. With open, heterogeneous applications in the areas of governance, risk and compliance; enterprise performance management; and business intelligence, Business Objects enables organizations of all sizes worldwide to close the gap between business strategy and execution. Together with a strong and diverse partner network, Business Objects allows customers to optimize business performance across all major industries including banking, retail, consumer-packaged goods and public sector. Business Objects is committed to helping customers turn raw data into actionable decisions, regardless of their underlying database, operating system, applications or IT system.

For more information about Business Objects, visit: www.businessobjects.com.
For more information about SAP, visit: www.sap.com.

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