Business Objects Selected by Application Service Providers as E-business Intelligence Standard for Hosted Applications

Business Wire, July 5, 2000

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 5, 2000

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, today announced a new initiative in the North American application service provider (ASP) market, with several new ASP partnerships and an ASP Starter Pack.

New Business Objects ASP partnerships include Corporate Systems, Mitratech, NewChannel, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and RZ Solutions. These partners provide ASP services to markets serving the customer relationship management (CRM), financial, legal, and sales force automation (SFA) industries.

To help its ASP partners facilitate the deployment of Business Objects products, Business Objects has created an ASP Starter Pack. The pack includes BusinessObjects Developer Suite product licensing, product training, best practices consulting, demo creation, and co-marketing.

"Where business intelligence (BI) meets ASP, a new category of service provider is created: the business intelligence service provider (BISP)," said Philip Russom, director of the data warehousing and business intelligence knowledge center at Hurwitz Group. "Business Objects is among the growing number of companies that provide BISPs with resources such as the ASP Starter Pack that lower the barrier to BISP customer evaluation and adoption."

By partnering with Business Objects, ASPs can provide customers e-BI solutions and services to build on their standard service offerings. Business Objects offers ASPs the following value propositions:

--  Business Objects helps ASPs offer complete solutions that include
    e-business intelligence. By adding e-business intelligence to
    their standard service offering, ASPs can secure customer loyalty
    and be more competitive.

--  Business Objects offers value-added services. ASPs can increase
    profitability by offering customers Business Objects resources
    such as extranet services that help deploy e-business intelligence
    to customers, partners, and suppliers.

--  Business Objects streamlines the ASP business model. ASPs can use
    business intelligence tools from Business Objects to optimize
    operations, anticipate trends in customer behavior, better meet
    customer needs, and gain insight into vertical markets.

Business Objects and ASPs Working Together

"ASPs that look at the e-BI requirements of their customers up front can retain competitive advantage by offering them exceptional value to their hosted application," said Timo Elliott, senior director of extranet marketing at Business Objects. "By delivering e-business throughout the entire ASP supply chain -- including customers -- e-BI can help ASPs identify the most profitable customers, and highlight areas of future growth and expansion."

RZ Solutions, currently a Business Objects consulting partner, reseller, and systems integrator, recently formed an ASP partnership with Business Objects. RZ Solutions will host Business Objects products in addition to providing their in-house marketing solution that helps customers efficiently deploy its e-BI service offering. The partnership also presents an opportunity for RZ Solutions customers to perform e-BI product viability testing with a particular set of their company data. The RZ Solutions Proof of Concept Lab enables potential customers to test and evaluate Business Objects products before they buy, via an internet browser.

"Many of our customers are fast-growing companies that would gain tremendous value from an e-business intelligence solution," said, Tom Hymanson, vice president of RZ Solutions. "Integrating Business Objects solutions with our ASP services provides customers industry-leading e-BI technology with the added bonus of time and resources that hosted applications bring to the table."

Mitratech is a supplier of open systems management solutions. Mitratech works closely with Business Objects to provide customers tightly integrated solutions for its Team Connect Enterprise and corporate legal management solutions (CLMS) products. Team Connect Enterprise is a browser-based enterprise management solution, and CLMS is Mitratech's client server solution. Both products manage contacts, events, projects, documents, and financial information, and are configurable to specific customer requirements facilitating rapid solution deployment.

"As the standard integrated reporting tool, Business Objects has played a key role in both our Team Connect Enterprise and CLMS applications," said Chuck Bernardo, vice president at Mitratech. "As we begin to offer our fully web-based Team Connect Enterprise application on the ASP model along with a full integration of WebIntelligence(R), Business Objects will be a major value-add to our hosted solutions."

NewChannel, an e-business service provider, delivers web-based proactive customer acquisition and e-sales services. These services qualify visitors and allow sales professionals to proactively contact the best prospects currently on their web site. NewChannel has integrated Business Objects reporting solutions into its service, giving sales managers access to information that allows them to analyze, and ultimately maximize, their sales success with NewChannel.