Business Objects Announces BusinessObjects 4.0J for Japanese Market; Popular Integrated Query, Reporting and OLAP Tool To Be Available to Customers in Japan

Business Wire, Dec 17, 1996

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 17, 1996--Business Objects (NASDAQ:BOBJY), the world's leading provider of integrated query, reporting, and online analytical processing (OLAP) tools, today announced BusinessObjects 4.0J, the Japanese version of its popular decision support tool.

Business Objects' decision support tools are distributed in Japan by a number of distributors, including NEC (Editor's note: see press release also dated December 16, 1996), K.K. Ashisuto, Fujitsu Limited and Toshiba Corporation. BusinessObjects 4.0J has been developed in response to the growing demand from Japanese companies for integrated query, reporting, and OLAP tools, for use in enterprise decision support and in particular, data warehousing.

The Japanese version of BusinessObjects is a complete double-byte implementation and fully supports Kanji and localized error messages and screens. BusinessObjects 4.0J will be available in 1Q97 on all Windows platforms.

"Business Objects has done very well in the Japanese market, and it is one of our fastest growing regions," said Bernard Liautaud, president and CEO of Business Objects. "We are excited to release BusinessObjects 4.0J, and bring integrated query, reporting, and OLAP to our customers in Japan. Increasingly, these customers are building data warehouses, and BusinessObjects has become the decision support tool of choice for end users."

BusinessObjects 4.0J Unveiled in Popular Data Warehousing Seminar Series

In October and November, 1996, BusinessObjects 4.0J was launched to the Japanese market during a very successful data warehousing seminar series attended by customers and prospects, representing many of the leading companies in Japan.

About Business Objects

Business Objects (NASDAQ:BOBJY) is the world's leading supplier of integrated query, reporting and OLAP tools. The company's award-winning product, BusinessObjects, provides mainstream business users with access to information stored in corporate databases, data warehouses and packaged applications.

The company pioneered the market for business-intelligent decision support tools in 1990 by introducing the first product to use a "semantic layer." This patented technology maps complex database schemas to a business representation understandable by non-technical end users.

Business Objects led the overall decision support tools market in 1995 with software license revenues of $48.7M, and outsold its nearest query and reporting tools competitor two-to-one according to IDC.

Business Objects products are in use at over 3,600 organizations in over 60 countries, and the company has sold more than 400,000 licenses worldwide. More information on Business Objects can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.businessobjects.com . -0-

BusinessObjects is a trademark of Business Objects SA. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

A full-text copy of this announcement may be obtained by calling the Company's fax retrieval line at 1-800-414-2114 and selecting option "one." The announcement may also be downloaded from the Web; access "http://www.businesswire.com/cnn" and search on "Business Objects"

CONTACT: Business Objects

Tracy Eiler, 408/953-6031 (press contact)

teiler@busobj.com

or

Herbst Consulting

Lisa Herbst, 408/739-0252 (IR contact)