Business Objects Launches Ithena, Inc.; New Subsidiary Defines First e-customer Intelligence Analytic Application

Business Wire, Feb 9, 2000

Business Editors &High-Tech Writers

Demo 2000

INDIAN WELLS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 9, 2000

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, today launched a new wholly owned subsidiary, called Ithena(TM) Inc., which has been formed to focus exclusively on the development, marketing, and sales of e-customer intelligence(TM) analytic applications.

Using e-customer intelligence, companies can better understand and exploit changes in customer behavior in real time, helping them to maximize the value of customer relationships, and increase both customer revenue and profitability over time. Using Ithena's analytic application, organizations will be able to understand the value of each customer, track changes in customer value, build strategies for handling each customer, and through integration with popular sales and marketing automation packages -- provide for consistent execution of that strategy across a wide range of customer touch points.

Ithena, Inc. is based in San Jose, Calif., and currently has 25 employees. Ithena's president is Charles Nicholls, a 12-year veteran of the enterprise software business and former marketing director for the Atlantic division of Business Objects. Prior to Business Objects, Nicholls held senior marketing positions with Sybase, Novell, and Digital Research.

Ithena's product, ITHENA e-Customer Intelligence 1.0, has been in development for more than one year, and is a layered application that builds upon and leverages core Business Objects products and technologies including BusinessObjects(TM), BusinessObjects Set Analyzer(TM), and WebIntelligence(R). The product is a full-blown analytic application for tracking and exploiting the value found in changing customer behavior. ITHENA 1.0, goes beyond first-generation analytic applications based on simple report templates and provides the deep analytic capabilities required for real time, closed loop customer intelligence. Additionally, ITHENA 1.0 includes a model-driven customization environment and vertical application templates to meet the needs of strategic vertical markets. (Editors' note: see Ithena product release dated February 9, 2000.)

&uot;We are very excited to be announcing Ithena,&uot; said Bernard Liautaud, president and CEO of Business Objects. &uot;Business Objects has traditionally been an e-business intelligence tools company; the creation of Ithena marks our entrance into the new e-customer intelligence analytic applications space. For the past year the Ithena team has been working hard to deliver a truly unique product in this area. I look forward to helping them enter the market and deliver high value to companies looking to build better customer relationships.&uot;

&uot;Because of the opportunity ahead of Ithena, and because we believe that the applications space has a fundamentally different value proposition and sales cycle from the tools space, we have decided to organize Ithena as a separate company,&uot; Liautaud continued. &uot;We believe that by separating Ithena from Business Objects the company will be able to greatly benefit from the focus that comes with having a single mission and single business purpose.&uot;

&uot;Ithena is focused solely on the growing opportunity of customer centricity,&uot; said Charles Nicholls, president of Ithena, Inc. &uot;Customer centricity is all about helping companies better understand the value of their customers. ITHENA 1.0 does that, and more. Not only do we help companies better understand their customer base, but we allow them to track changes over time, build a unique strategy for handling each customer, and help them treat each customer consistently across all touch points in the organization. We are extremely excited to be entering this market and capturing the e-customer intelligence opportunity.&uot;

This press release contains forward looking statements with respect to the demand for and expected performance of Ithena's software. Such forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, the emergence, growth and changes in the market for e-customer intelligence analytic applications, the ability of Ithena to gain market acceptance of its software, and increased competition, any of which could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. For a more complete discussion of risk factors that could affect the Company's, including Ithena's, current and future operating results see the discussions in the Company's reports filed with the SEC, including but not limited to the Company's Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 1998 and the Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended September 31, 1999.

About Ithena, Inc.

Ithena, Inc. is the first company to develop e-customer intelligence analytic applications that enable business managers to identify, analyze, and predict changing customer behavior -- and act upon it. By tracking fine grain detail, companies can uncover and exploit opportunities in near real time as each customer changes their individual behavior. The ITHENA analytic application delivers real-time insight into individual customer behavior across the enterprise, across all channels and customer touch points.