Business Objects Announces Crystal Xcelsius; Interactive Visual Analytics Let Excel Users Easily Transform Spreadsheets Into Dynamic Presentations

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ)(Euronext Paris ISIN code:FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of businessintelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the availability ofCrystal Xcelsius(TM). Crystal Xcelsius allows users to turn ordinaryExcel spreadsheets into interactive visual analytics that displaybusiness information in a variety of dramatic, engaging styles. Withthe launch of Crystal Xcelsius, Business Objects offers customers aunique way to gain the most value from personal and corporateinformation. Crystal Xcelsius is based on technology obtained throughthe acquisition of Infommersion, Inc., completed November 1, 2005.

"Business Objects understands that customers want highly visualand interactive BI at their fingertips -- and Crystal Xcelsius is thenext step in delivering that kind of revolutionary simplicity," saidRene Bonvanie, chief marketing officer at Business Objects. "We justlaunched BusinessObjects(TM) Intelligent Question(TM), which brings BIto every worker -- regardless of technical skill or job title. WithCrystal Xcelsius, Business Objects arms any Excel user with a powerfuland easy-to-use BI solution. By providing simpler ways to visualize,share, and interact with information, Business Objects continues tobreak down the barriers to BI and reach a whole new category ofusers."

Crystal Xcelsius provides business users with "point and click"simplicity that allows them to collaborate with colleagues, reachconsensus faster, and improve productivity. For example, a salesmanager can transform an Excel spreadsheet representing quarterlyresults from the Northeast region into an interactive presentation,such as a map or graph. This presentation can then be shared with teammembers or executives via PowerPoint, PDF, Outlook, and the web.Because the presentation is interactive, team members can test outdifferent scenarios within the presentation and immediately seepotential outcomes. The eye-catching visualization technology ofCrystal Xcelsius allows business users to more powerfully communicatetheir analysis, make recommendations, and collaborate to improveperformance.

Customers Praise Crystal Xcelsius

Currently, thousands of organizations rely on Crystal Xcelsius.Following are comments from some Crystal Xcelsius users:

"Crystal Xcelsius is one of the most innovative products I've seenfor many years," Rick Hutley, senior director of Internet BusinessSolutions Group at Cisco Systems, Inc. "We are big fans of CrystalXcelsius and use it extensively to support business modeling andimpact assessment for our customers. We have found that presenting ouranalysis and findings to our customers using Crystal Xcelsius hasdramatically improved our ability to present complex ideas in a highlyimpactful way."

"Crystal Xcelsius enables us to communicate more effectively withour members," said Mike Croghan, director of electronic communicationswith Affordable Care. "Using Crystal Xcelsius, we can provide ourclients with real-time, actionable information. Affordable Care isgrowing 20 percent per year, and we're confident that Crystal Xcelsiuswill help fuel that growth. We're excited about the combination ofCrystal Xcelsius with Business Objects. Together these solutionsaddress the BI needs of a growing company, like ours."

"Crystal Xcelsius helps us to be better stewards of our resourcesand ensure our continued growth," said William Elger, executivedirector of administration and chief financial officer, University ofMichigan Medical School. "Now we can easily to present useful andrelevant information in compelling ways. Crystal Xcelsius providesinteractive visual analytics that help our medical school departmentsto better monitor and manage operations, ultimately allowing us tomake more informed business decisions."

"Crystal Xcelsius has revolutionized the way we present complexengineering calculations," said Frank Bennardo, founder and owner ofEngineering Express. "Using Crystal Xcelsius, we've built a series ofinteractive, visual calculators that let engineers perform mandatorystructural calculations quickly and easily. This gives engineersvisual cues that indicate compliance with the latest safetyspecifications, including new natural disaster-preparedness guidelinesestablished after last year's hurricane season. Now we can explorepotential scenarios, such as what would happen to a structure as windspeed increases, and what adjustments would allow the structure towithstand stronger winds."

Widespread Partner Support for Crystal Xcelsius

Business Objects has built the largest and most comprehensivepartner network in the business intelligence industry, and willactively promote and sell Crystal Xcelsius through its channelpartners. Business Objects channel partners include technology, OEM,VAR, and volume resellers or distributors, and extend across all majorvertical industries. Crystal Xcelsius is already generatingsignificant partner praise, including:

"With Crystal Xcelsius, our customers can open up the benefits ofBI to even more employees across their organization," said HarryZoberman, senior vice president, marketing and operations at ASAPSoftware. "The strong combination of ASAP's expertise in softwarelicensing services and Business Objects' business intelligenceofferings appeals to a wide variety of customers. With this newsolution, Business Objects provides the breadth of functionalityrequired by our enterprise customers, while allowing the flexibilityto meet the constraints of our mid-market customers. Plus, the pricepoint makes this an attractive offering for all our customers."

"With the addition of Crystal Xcelsius to Business Objects BIsolutions, now our small and medium-sized customers have a full rangeof BI tools available to them," said Michael Carioti, manager ofmarketing development at PROVANTAGE Corporation. "Our customersincreasingly need a simple way to turn raw data into actionableinformation -- and Crystal Xcelsius delivers. Crystal Xcelsius is onemore solution that extends the benefits of BI to non-technical usersand pushes BI further across our customers' organizations."

"Crystal Xcelsius is a groundbreaking new product that gives anybusiness user a simple way to impress colleagues with interactive datapresentation," said Gertrud Pillay, senior director at PC Mall, Inc."Because this product is made to work on top of Excel spreadsheets --and Excel is ubiquitous in most organizations -- Crystal Xcelsius willincrease our market opportunity within our existing customer base.We're also impressed by the range of Crystal Xcelsius: it can eitherbe a foot in the door for some companies to start deploying BI, or afantastic way to add value and extend the use of existing BIdeployments. "

Web Seminar for Business Objects Partners

On November 15, 2005 at 11:00 am ET, Business Objects will host aweb seminar for partners entitled "Significantly Increase your Sales &Margin with Crystal Xcelsius." This web seminar will discuss thebenefits Crystal Xcelsius offers Business Objects partners and theircustomers. Organizations will also learn how to join the BusinessObjects partner network. To register for the web seminar please visit:www.businessobjects.com/cx/seminar/partners/.

Availability and Pricing

Crystal Xcelsius is available now directly from the BusinessObjects eStore, which can be found at www.businessobjects.com. CrystalXcelsius can also be purchased from its channel partners. Moreinformation, including pricing, can be found atwww.businessobjects.com.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI)software company. With more than 30,000 customers worldwide, includingover 80 percent of the Fortune 500, Business Objects helpsorganizations gain better insight into their business, improvedecision making, and optimize enterprise performance. The company'sbusiness intelligence platform, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BIindustry's most advanced and complete platform for performancemanagement, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and dataintegration. BusinessObjects XI includes Crystal Reports(R), theindustry standard for enterprise reporting. Business Objects has alsobuilt the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, andthe company offers consulting and education services to help customerseffectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

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

Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects,WebIntelligence, Crystal Xcelsius, Crystal Reports, and CrystalEnterprise are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business ObjectsS.A. or its affiliated companies in the United States and/or othercountries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of theirrespective owners.