eBay Selects Business Objects as E-business Intelligence Platform

Business Wire, March 23, 2000

Business Editors, High Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 23, 2000

World's Leading Online Personal Trading Community Chooses

Business Objects for e-Business Intelligence and Customer Insight

Applications

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ), the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, today announced that eBay, the world's leading online personal trading community, has selected Business Objects as the e-BI solution for eBay's customer insight, corporate data warehousing and data mart applications.

The company that pioneered the online person-to-person trading community purchased the full suite of Business Objects e-BI solutions, including WEBINTELLIGENCE(R), the business intelligence tool for the internet, and BUSINESSOBJECTS SET ANALYZER(TM), the set-based business analysis solution from Business Objects.

With over 1.5 billion page views per month and over 4 million items for sale, eBay offers an unparalleled breadth of selection and market opportunity to the eBay buyer and seller. The company will use e-BI solutions from Business Objects to analyze this vast amount of data, in order to make improvements that will benefit their auction community.

SET ANALYZER, the set-based analysis tool from Business Objects, played an important role in eBay's selection of Business Objects. The product's unique attributes, such as visual selection of data sets and set-based analysis, will provide eBay with a powerful yet easy to use tool for understanding its customers and shaping its marketing initiatives accordingly.

"We operate in a very competitive marketplace and it is important that we continually improve the experience for our community of buyers and sellers," said Bob Sanguedolce, CIO of eBay. "Business Objects will allow us to capitalize on the size and high transaction volumes of our dynamic community, to better understand our users and enable continued improvements that will benefit the eBay community. We chose Business Objects as our e-BI standard because of its ease-of-use, end-user driven marketing analysis, and internet capabilities."

"Internet industry leaders like eBay represent the next generation of businesses that will benefit from e-BI technology,"said Bernard Liautaud, president and CEO of Business Objects. "Defined as the convergence of business intelligence and the internet, e-BI has delivered considerable value to brick-and-mortar companies that want to connect more tightly with their customers and business partners. Now, as leading internet companies like eBay discover the power of e-BI, they create an entirely new level of value for their network of visitors and business partners. We are excited to work with e-Bay, an e-business pioneer, as they capitalize on the power of e-BI technology to deliver an enhanced level of service for their auction community."

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions. The company coined the term e-business intelligence in 1998 to describe the intersection of business intelligence and the internet. Using e-business intelligence, organizations can access, analyze, and share information in intranet, extranet, and e-business environments. In intranets, the company's products provide employees with information to make better business decisions, and are used in environments ranging from workgroups of 20 users to enterprise deployments exceeding 20,000. In the extranet environment, the company is pioneering the use of e-BI in applications that allow organizations to build stronger relationships by linking customers, partners, and suppliers via the internet. In addition, the company's products can improve the performance of an e-business by providing reporting and analysis against the ever-expanding amount of transaction and profile data that is collected each day throughout the world wide web.

Founded in 1990, Business Objects pioneered the modern business intelligence industry by inventing and patenting a "semantic layer" that insulates users from the technical complexity of database systems. Today, the company has sold more than 1,683,000 licenses to over 9,700 organizations in more than 80 countries. The company's stock is publicly traded under the ticker symbols Nasdaq: BOBJ and PARIS BOURSE: code SICOVAM 12074. Business Objects can be reached at 408-953-6000 and www.businessobjects.com.

About eBay

eBay (www.ebay.com), the world's personal trading community(TM) pioneered person-to-person online trading. Founded in 1995, eBay has developed an efficient and entertaining trading site on the Web that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. eBay has more than 10 million registered users. eBay members add more than 500,000 items to the site daily in more than 4,200 categories, including: automobiles; antiques; books, movies and music; coins and stamps; collectibles; computers; dolls and figures; jewelry and gemstones; photo and electronics; pottery and glass; sports memorabilia and toys.