Business Objects and Salesforce.com Team to Provide Advanced Business Intelligence and Data Integration to Joint Customers

Business Wire, Sept 13, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- BusinessObjects XI Integration Kit for Salesforce.com Provides Joint Customers with Advanced Reporting and Analysis Capabilities

Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ)(Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB) and salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM) today announced the release of the BusinessObjects(TM) XI Integration Kit for salesforce.com. The integration kit enables organizations to maximize the value of their salesforce.com data using the industry-leading business intelligence and data integration technology from Business Objects. BusinessObjects XI, including BusinessObjects Data Integrator, enables salesforce.com customers to have easy access to advanced reporting and analysis capabilities for their customer information housed in salesforce.com and elsewhere throughout the enterprise.

Through this strong partnership, Business Objects and salesforce.com have worked closely to integrate the two company's solutions and will conduct joint sales and marketing activities. Business Objects has leveraged Appforce, salesforce.com's on-demand platform, to create a solution that complements the salesforce.com software-as-service approach.

Salesforce.com provides a powerful on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) solution that helps companies attract, grow, and retain profitable customers. With the Integration Kit for salesforce.com, BusinessObjects XI extends the reporting capabilities already provided by salesforce.com to enable customers to access their salesforce.com data, as well as data from other sources such as ERP, MRP, and other CRM systems, to develop advanced reports and perform ad-hoc analysis of things such as customer trends and sales pipelines. In addition, BusinessObjects XI enables the creation of customized, role-based dashboards for executives, managers, and individual employees to enable each user to see the information relevant to their job in a highly graphical manner. These dashboards enable companies to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) and proactively alert users with the information they need.

"Salesforce is proud to extend its leadership in on-demand analytics through a partnership with Business Objects. In addition to the industry-leading on-demand analytics built into Salesforce, we continue to offer our customers the broadest array of options to analyze their CRM information," said Bobby Napiltonia, SVP of worldwide alliances at salesforce.com. "With a powerful solution like BusinessObjects XI, companies can extend the robust reporting and analysis capabilities native to salesforce.com, to create personalized dashboards and utilize other advanced analysis functions to maximize the value of their salesforce.com data. Our tight integration with Business Objects is all about realizing our vision of giving customers the best insight possible through internally developed and 3rd party analytics options."

BusinessObjects XI provides secure Web Services integration for salesforce.com customers, enabling reliable data access and optimized reporting, analysis, and performance management capabilities. Joint customers can use BusinessObjects XI to combine salesforce.com data with their other corporate data to gain a complete view of their business. The combined salesforce.com and Business Objects solution provides powerful analytics to gain the necessary customer and business insight to make better business decisions and optimize enterprise performance.

"Through advanced reporting and analytics, including dashboards, Business Object offers joint customers the ability to get even more value from their salesforce.com information by integrating their Salesforce.com data with corporate data warehouses or other data sources," said Janet Wood, group vice president of global alliances and OEM at Business Objects. "BusinessObjects XI, the foundation for the new Integration Kit for salesforce.com, helps customers align execution with strategy and more easily monitor key business metrics to improve decision making. In addition, this solution enables companies to leverage the valuable customer data stored in salesforce.com with their other corporate data to gain the insights necessary to improve the overall performance of their business."

Appforce is a complete on-demand platform that includes Appforce Builder, Appforce DB, Appforce API, and the Appforce OS for development and deployment of multiple on-demand applications. Appforce provides unprecedented ease of customization and integration for Salesforce deployments, as well as enabling a whole new generation of on-demand applications that go beyond CRM.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company. With more than 30,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500, Business Objects helps organizations gain better insight into their business, improve decision making, and optimize enterprise performance. The company's business intelligence platform, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete platform for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and data integration. BusinessObjects XI includes Crystal Reports(R), the industry standard for enterprise reporting. Business Objects has built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and also offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.