Business Objects Open Portal Initiative Positions Company as Leading Business Intelligence Content Provider for Enterprise Information Portals

Business Wire, June 6, 2000

Business Editors and High Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 6, 2000

Initiative to Integrate BUSINESSOBJECTS INFOVIEW with EIP

Frameworks and Services for Seamless Access to Structured Data

Business Objects (NASDAQ: BOBJ), the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, today announced the Business Objects open portal initiative (OPI). The open portal initiative is a partner program whereby Business Objects is working with leading enterprise information portal (EIP) vendors to provide customers with a complete end-to-end, content-rich portal solution.

Business Objects provides a business intelligence portal, named BUSINESSOBJECTS(TM) INFOVIEW, that collects and consolidates a company's business intelligence (BI) information and presents it in a secure, focused, and personalized view to business users. (Editor's note: please see related press release titled "Business Objects Announces BUSINESSOBJECTS INFOVIEW" dated May 2, 2000).

EIPs unite business content and applications into a single, browser-based interface. By partnering with Business Objects, EIP vendors can provide seamless access to structured data, including BI content such as corporate reports, Microsoft(R) Office documents, Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) files, and spreadsheets within their portal.

Open Portal Initiative Partners

For its open portal initiative, Business Objects is partnering with EIP vendors IBM, Plumtree Software, and Viador. Business Objects is also working with Braun Consulting, a leading IT consulting firm in the portal market.

IBM

IBM Enterprise Information Portal is the foundation of a company-wide software strategy designed to help corporations leverage the information supporting today's e-business applications. It lets business users personalize data queries, search extensively for very specific needs, and utilize relevant results--from across an unrivaled number of IBM and non-IBM data sources, both traditional and multimedia.

"IBM's Enterprise Information Portal, as the foundation for building e-portal applications, combined with BUSINESSOBJECTS INFOVIEW, provides our mutual customers with a powerful means to access and search an enormous variety of business information," said Jim Kelly, vice president of marketing for IBM Data Management Solutions. "Together we are providing customers with powerful e-business decision-making capabilities made possible by the unification and leveraging of information from business intelligence and a wide variety of other data sources."

Plumtree Software

For the initial phase of the OPI, corporate portal vendor Plumtree Software plans to integrate key features from BUSINESSOBJECTS INFOVIEW and WEBINTELLIGENCE(R) with the Plumtree Corporate Portal as Plumtree Portal Gadgets(TM). Similar in appearance to the sports scoreboard or stock portfolio that appears in a consumer portal, Plumtree Portal Gadgets represent enterprise application components or internet services. The BUSINESSOBJECTS Gadgets, which are available to Plumtree and Business Objects customers at http://gadgets.plumtree.com, include:

--   My WEBINTELLIGENCE Document List: provides users the ability to
     view both full-client and thin-client documents from their
     personalized portal page, called MyPage. The user can then
     organize documents by the inbox, and corporate and personal
     groups.

--   WEBINTELLIGENCE Single Sign-On: allows users to store their
     username and password for WEBINTELLIGENCE inside their Plumtree
     user preferences. Upon login to the corporate portal, the welcome
     frame for WEBINTELLIGENCE will appear in users' front pages,
     allowing for single sign-on to WEBINTELLIGENCE.

--   My WEBINTELLIGENCE Reports: provides users the ability to place a
     graphical WEBINTELLIGENCE report on their MyPage. Users can
     choose other reports by choosing from a list maintained on their
     MyPage. The report data will be refreshed so users will always be
     viewing the latest data when the document is accessed.

--   My WEBINTELLIGENCE Alert: allows users to create thresholds based
     information within a WEBINTELLIGENCE report. If that threshold is
     exceeded, an "alert" message will appear; otherwise, a standard
     "OK" message appears. In both cases, users are provided with an
     updated report status and can make more informed business
     decisions.

"Plumtree is pleased to be a part of the Business Objects OPI to extend our business intelligence application integration and offer our customers an additional choice," said John Kunze, CEO of Plumtree Software. "The BUSINESSOBJECTS Gadget suite provides efficient access to robust business intelligence functionality. Now our joint customers can easily integrate their BUSINESSOBJECTS content into their enterprise-wide Plumtree Corporate Portal deployments."

Viador

Viador's enterprise information portal serves as an open framework that facilitates the rapid deployment of e-business solutions by encapsulating e-business applications, business information sources, and internet content within the Viador portal. Viador's E-Portal Framework(TM) is the foundation upon which Global 1000, emerging internet companies, independent software providers, application service providers, and system integrators can deploy a wide variety of e-business applications including: business-to-business (B2B) portals and business-to-employee (B2E) portals. Viador integrates all application components and provides a scaleable, customizable delivery vehicle for deploying e-business solutions faster and at less cost.