Business Objects and Penta Revolutionize Management Information and Decision Support in Engineering & Construction Industry

Business Wire, May 1, 1996

BROOKFIELD, Wis.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 1, 1996--Penta Technologies, Inc. today heralded the release of BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.0, a powerful new version of the industry's leading enterprise decision support toolset.

Penta Technologies is a Business Objects Vertical Application Reseller (VAR) partner.

Penta Technologies specializes in delivering effective integrated project and financial systems to the Engineering & Construction (E&C) industry. For more than twenty-five years, the company has been meeting the management information needs of the world's leading E&C organizations. The Penta professionals are helping top ENR-ranked firms -- including John Brown E & C, Black & Veatch, and Rust International -- operate and compete more effectively in the turbulent conditions of today's engineering and construction market.

The company's principle product, PENTA, offers a unique, standards-based system architecture that helps project-oriented organizations manage all aspects of the business, from people, projects, and documents to financial reports and consolidations. Penta Technologies meets its clients' management information needs by applying the most powerful, widely-accepted open systems standards and products, including the industry-leading ORACLE relational database management system, and the industry's most powerful business-intelligent decision support tool, BUSINESSOBJECTS.

Karl Koenig, Penta Technologies president and CEO said, "Our clients are very excited about the release of BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.0. At Penta Technologies, we take a `best of breed' approach to providing client solutions. Our strategy is to search out and employ all the best tools, to help our users become more efficient, effective, productive, and profitable. BUSINESSOBJECTS is an integral component of this strategy."

Koenig continued, "With its powerful new scripting language and the graphical DESIGNER and SUPERVISOR modules, BUSINESSOBJECTS 4.0 will enable our clients to develop and deploy custom EIS and decision support applications that give them exactly the information they need, when and how they need it. The E&C industry operates on exceptionally tight margins; getting the right information in a timely manner can have a tremendous impact on the outcome of a project. Tools like BUSINESSOBJECTS dramatically increase our clients' productivity and effectiveness."

"Sophisticated application suites like PENTA really benefit from BUSINESSOBJECTS' meta representation of complex database structures. Using data objects defined by Penta Technologies, PENTA users can develop, deliver, and administer robust decision support systems with minimal effort, and without assistance from IS," said Bernard Liautaud, president and CEO of Business Objects. "Teaming PENTA's powerful, project-oriented data objects with BUSINESSOBJECTS' dynamic microcube query engine and reporting tools provides a solution that is unique in the E&C industry."

About Business Objects

Business Objects (NASDAQ: BOBJY) is a leading provider of enterprise decision support tools that deliver access to data stored in corporate databases, data warehouses, and packaged applications. The company pioneered the market for business-intelligent decision support tools in 1990 with the introduction of its flagship product, BUSINESSOBJECTS, the first decision support tool to use a "semantic layer" to map complex database schemas to a business representation understandable by mainstream business users.

Business Objects generated over $60M in revenue in 1995, concluding its fifth consecutive year of more than 100% revenue growth. BUSINESSOBJECTS has been licensed in more than 50 countries to over 2,900 customer sites and 160,000 users worldwide.

More information on Business Objects can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.businessobjects.com.

Penta Technologies, Inc. has been providing effective, integrated project and financial systems to the engineering and construction industry since 1968. Corporate headquarters are located at 250 South Executive Drive, Suite 201, Brookfield, Wis., 53005.

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Note to Editors: PENTA is a registered trademark of Penta Technologies, Inc.; BUSINESSOBJECTS is a trademark of Business Objects S.A. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

CONTACT: Business Objects

Miriam Standish, 408/973-9300

or

Penta Technologies

Kurt Koenig, 414/780-2402