Business Objects Provides Retail Customers Flexibility for Data Warehouse Connectivity

Partnerships with Leading Enterprise Data Warehouse Solution Providers Help Joint Customers Quickly Access and Analyze Large Volumes of Disparate Data

NEW YORK - NRF 95th Annual Convention & EXPO 2006 - Jan. 16, 2006 - The retail industry is among the most data intensive industries today. Functional roles with retail organizations are increasingly looking to deploy business intelligence (BI) solutions on top of specialized enterprise data warehouses to enable them more easily make sense of all this data. To help ensure the success of these BI deployments, Business Objects (NASDAQ: BOBJ; Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of BI solutions, has partnered with the top enterprise data warehouse solution providers. These partnerships provide the flexibility to enable Business Objects customers to choose the data warehouse solution that best suits their needs, while ensuring that Business Objects will support the connectivity between the two solutions.

Enterprise data warehouses are designed to handle complex analyses of terabytes of data, and combined with a business intelligence solution deliver an easier way for companies to conduct in-depth analyses of their data to leverage important trends. BusinessObjects XI, the industry's leading business intelligence platform, offers connectivity to a variety of data warehouse solutions to help ensure world-class BI deployments. This data warehouse connectivity enables retailers to address specific business issues, including store assortment optimization, customer profiling and campaign management, and loss prevention. The BusinessObjects XI performance management applications provide retailers with the BI capabilities to address these specific issues and drive performance and profitability within their organizations.

"In today's hectic business environment, organizations need to be more agile, and the combination of an enterprise data warehouse and world-class business intelligence solution can help companies achieve this," said Rene Bonvanie, chief marketing officer of Business Objects. "Business Objects leads the BI industry in providing customers with a wide array of data warehouse connectivity options to enable them to deploy a high-performance and scalable data analysis solution."

Business Objects has formed strong partnerships with leading data warehousing vendors, including IBM, Teradata, Netezza, and DATAllegro:

IBM
Business Objects has partnered with IBM for more than 10 years and the two companies share more than 3000 joint customers. Business Objects has worked closely with IBM Information Management to develop industry specific data warehouse solutions. IBM Information Management provides the data warehouse infrastructure for decision making and Business Objects provides the visualization with roles-based dashboards to make that information actionable.

Business Objects and IBM are premier partners in retail, with hundreds of joint customers worldwide including Auchan, Mark's Works Warehouse, and Kohl's Department Store. Joint customers benefit from a deep level of integration, with solutions optimized all the way down to the data model level. The IBM Retail Business Intelligence Solution combines IBM's Retail Data Warehouse with key reports and analytics from Business Objects that enable enterprise reporting and performance management in virtually every aspect of a retail business. The integrated solution leverages the IBM Retail Data Warehouse Model, which is compliant with the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) Data Model and delivers industry best practices.

Similarly, IBM and Business Objects have developed integrated solutions for Banking and Insurance enabling Financial Services organizations to unlock information stored in legacy systems. The tight integration of these solutions simplifies deployment, speeds time to value, enabling companies to focus on critical business issues, gain greater visibility across the enterprise, and make more informed decisions when driving the business.

Teradata
Business Objects and Teradata enjoy a solid partnership and have more than 300 joint customers. Business Objects has worked closely with Teradata to optimize its BI platform for use with Teradata solutions, and also achieved a benchmark certification to run as a part of the Retail Decisions solutions from Teradata. The combination of Business Objects BI tools and Teradata's database delivers a safe and proven choice for organizations looking for enterprise BI deployments.

"As Rene Bonvanie mentioned, being agile is critical in meeting the challenges of the competition and the ever-changing business environment which our customers face today," said Randy S. Lea, vice president of product and services marketing for Teradata, a division of NCR Corporation. "The BI solution must not only be powerful and make it easy and flexible to view the enterprise data, but it also must be easy to implement the underlying data warehouse platform. The agility, ease of use, and sophistication provided by Business Objects combined with the agility to grow and enhance the warehouse, ease of use, and price/performance of Teradata has been a key driver for Teradata's leadership position in enterprise data warehousing."

Netezza
Business Objects and Netezza have partnered to create a powerful BI foundation to help companies fully leverage their enterprise data, and enable business users to quickly uncover strategic insights. Netezza and Business Objects have many shared customers who are jointly leveraging the products from both companies to optimize performance. BusinessObjects XI fully supports the Netezza Performance Server data warehouse appliance to deliver a BI solution with the high performance and ease of use required by enterprise customers. In the retail space, this tight integration allows joint customers to analyze more detailed transactional data to better understand customer buying patterns and make more effective business decisions in areas such as CRM, merchandising, and supply chain management.

"Global enterprises demand a complete business intelligence and data warehousing solution that can quickly translate data into business success," said Ellen Rubin, vice president of marketing at Netezza. "Netezza's relationship with Business Objects allows customers like Epsilon, Neiman Marcus, Orange UK, and others to achieve a new level of BI performance for strategic advantage, at a low total cost of ownership. The combined solution offers deeper business insights based on detailed analysis of enterprise data, and delivers market-leading analytic performance."

DATAllegro
Business Objects and DATAllegro have worked together closely to enhance the interoperability between BusinessObjects XI and DATAllegro's high performance data warehouse appliances. By using DATAllegro's data warehouse appliance along with BusinessObjects XI, joint customers can add more users, access more historical data, speed up loading times, and increase ad hoc query capabilities. As a result, these customers can obtain more value from their business intelligence investments.

"Over the last few years data growth has accelerated significantly, driven by such factors as compliance and security legislation," said Stuart Frost, founder and CEO of DATAllegro. "To handle the massive amounts of data, organizations are looking for a complete BI and data warehousing solution with world class capabilities and performance. DATAllegro's data warehouse appliances give Business Objects users access to a high performance, scalable data warehouse that can be up and running in a short period of time."

To discover more about Business Objects solutions for retail, and how deploying or migrating to BusinessObjects XI can improve business performance, please visit http://www.businessobjects.com/retail/.

About Business Objects, an SAP company

Business Objects has been a pioneer in business intelligence (BI) since the dawn of the category. Today, as the world's leading BI software company, Business Objects transforms the way the world works through intelligent information. The company helps illuminate understanding and decision-making at more than 46,000 organizations around the globe. Through a combination of innovative technology, global consulting and education services, and the industry's strongest and most diverse partner network, Business Objects enables companies of all sizes to make transformative business decisions based on intelligent, accurate, and timely information.

Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at www.businessobjects.com.

Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects and Crystal Reports are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, WebIntelligence, Crystal Reports, Intelligent Question, and Desktop Intelligence are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects S.A. or its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

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