Business Objects Announces BusinessObjects Data Quality XI

New Solution Builds on Business Objects Enterprise Information Management Strategy to Provide Organizations with Single, Trusted Source of Information

SAN JOSE, Calif. and PARIS - July 31, 2006 - Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ; Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the launch of BusinessObjects™ Data Quality XI, a suite of products that advance the data quality solutions acquired from Firstlogic, Inc. Data Quality XI includes innovative features that help organizations standardize on one data quality platform, scale their data quality deployment to meet growing business needs, and simplify data quality tools so that more users can benefit from trusted data. Data Quality XI is the latest milestone in the Business Objects enterprise information management (EIM) strategy, which provides a foundation of trustworthy data for BI and performance management initiatives.

According to a recent Harris Interactive survey, information workers in the U.S. spend an average of 12 hours per week verifying the accuracy of data, translating into a significant productivity loss. Business Objects is the only BI vendor to offer a comprehensive (EIM) strategy designed to ensure that employees have access to accurate, timely data.

"Business Objects stands apart because it is the only BI vendor that provides a complete EIM solution that's fully integrated with their BI solutions," said Ed Todd, data warehouse manager at Nemours. "The company's EIM solution just got one step better with Data Quality XI. Nemours pediatricians provided quality health care to nearly a quarter million children last year alone. Ensuring complete, accurate data is critical for our physicians and researchers to provide leadership and services to restore and improve the health of children. Data quality is of paramount importance to any health care organization -- and Data Quality XI will help us improve the quality of information and overall visibility into our work to provide pediatric health care to our nation's most vulnerable population."

"Business Objects recognizes that successful BI and performance management require a trusted data foundation, and Data Quality XI enhances the EIM offering we provide to customers," said Frank Dravis, vice president of EIM marketing at Business Objects. "We stand alone amongst BI vendors in offering our customers technologies and services to support an EIM strategy, and that's why customers are choosing Business Objects to put trusted data in the hand of every decision maker - in the most recently reported quarter, our EIM license revenue grew 78 percent year-over-year."

Enhanced Business Rule Management and Web Services Make Standardization Easier
In a recent study by The Data Warehousing Institute (TDWI), 70 percent of the 750 users surveyed ranked standardization as the most important feature of a data quality solution. Business Objects enables companies to define standards that establish consistent data quality practices across the organization.

Data Quality XI makes standardization easier with new features including:

A centralized business rule repository that lets customers create business rules, which can be consistently applied across the company and results in more reliable data quality. For example, a company can use Data Quality XI to consolidate multiple sales databases and ensure that the same data quality process is applied throughout the company.
A service oriented architecture, which enables different departments across the organization to access and share the business rules repository. Web services give administrators a flexible way to deploy data quality solutions, which lets them respond quickly to business events.

New Features Helps Enterprises Scale to Meets Growing Business Needs
Data Quality XI provides customers with a scalable data quality platform that can be extended as their business grows. The new solution helps organizations resolve challenges like ensuring data quality within and across multiple enterprise applications, regulatory compliance programs, and international growth.

Data Quality XI helps organizations extend and address changing business challenges by providing:

Integration with currently available third-party and proprietary applications including SAP, Siebel, Oracle, PeopleSoft, and Informatica. These new capabilities can be quickly deployed to ensure data quality within these applications, which adds value to the application and builds user confidence in the data.
An automated watch list solution that helps companies comply with the U.S.A. Patriot Act. Organizations can automatically match their databases against government watch lists to identify criminal suspects or suspicious financial transactions, including terrorists, money launderers, or drug traffickers. Data Quality XI includes new watch lists to ensure compliance and avoid government imposed penalties.
Expanded international capabilities for localized data quality projects. Now when companies expand globally, they can maintain the same business rules across the company for data quality process while adhering to local address and naming conventions. Data Quality XI supports offers new locale specific parsing for Arabic, French, Spanish and Portuguese data as well as global matching capabilities for China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other non-Latin scripts.

Expanded Ease of Use Capabilities Simplify Data Quality Management
Data Quality XI enables easier management of the entire data quality process with new reporting capabilities and an easy-to-use match wizard.

Data Quality XI simplifies administration of data quality projects with:

Improved integration with Crystal Reports that provide administrators with statistical information on how data quality projects are performing. Now administrators can easily evaluate and improve the data quality process.
A match wizard that guides administrators through the process of designing and deploying their matching strategies. Data Quality XI allows users to spend more time fine-tuning data quality strategies rather than learning how to be a matching expert.

Global Services Solutions for Data Quality
Business Objects Global Services offers a comprehensive set of professional services focused on data quality. Business Objects Data Services enable customers to source the right data, ensure consistent data quality, and implement a data architecture tailored to each organization's analytical and performance management requirements. Data Services leverages the Business Objects enterprise information management (EIM) solutions to ensure customers make decisions based on complete, timely, and accurate information. To learn more about Business Objects Global Services, please visit www.businessobjects.com/services.

Availability
BusinessObjects Data Quality XI is currently expected to be available in the third quarter of 2006. For more information, please visit www.businessobjects.com/products/dataquality.

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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The Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Intelligent Question, and Xcelsius 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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