Business Objects Again Recognized as the Worldwide Market Share Leader in Business Intelligence by Leading Industry Analyst Firm

Business Wire, July 26, 2006

SAN JOSE, Calif. & PARIS -- Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ)(Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), today announced that it has once again been named the business intelligence (BI) market share leader, according to the 2005 market share numbers issued this week by IDC. With core business intelligence software license and maintenance 2005 revenues of $795.3 million, Business Objects owns a 14% share of the business intelligence software tools market.

The IDC report, "Worldwide Business Intelligence 2005 Vendor Shares (July 2006, #202603)," combines software license and maintenance revenue data from query, reporting, and analysis tools, and advanced analytics software. In the report, IDC notes that in 2005, the BI market grew 11.5% to reach $5.7 billion in worldwide software revenues. In addition, IDC reported that Business Objects core BI revenue grew to a total of $795.3 million, which is one third greater than the next closest vendor. Business Objects leads the end-user query, reporting, and analysis tools category, the largest segment of the BI market, capturing more than 17% of the market.

"For yet another year Business Objects ended 2005 as the leading BI software vendor," said Dan Vesset, research director at IDC. "Business Objects is the dominant query, reporting and analysis vendor with a broad user base spanning all major geographic regions, company size segments and industries. Building on this base, the company has ambitious goals for growth. This growth can be either organic or involve further acquisitions. Both paths will likely contribute to Business Objects top line over the foreseeable future with most of the organic growth coming from query, reporting, and analysis tools both from expanding its user base within enterprise accounts and deeper penetration of mid-sized organizations."

"Business Objects has been a clear leader in the overall BI market for the past ten years -- first leading the standalone query, reporting, and analysis market and more recently, the overall BI market," said John Schwarz, chief executive officer at Business Objects. "We continue to lead the market through continuous innovation, with groundbreaking new products like BusinessObjects(TM) XI Release 2, the industry's strongest and most complete BI platform. Most importantly, Business Objects solutions are proven to help our customers improve their business performance and succeed in a competitive environment. That's why organizations continue to make Business Objects their BI provider of choice."

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world's leading business intelligence (BI) software company, with more than 35,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into their business, and optimize performance. The company's innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BI industry's most advanced and complete solution for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data visualization software. Business Objects has also built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and Paris, France. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq (BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at www.businessobjects.com.

The Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Intelligent Question, and Xcelsius are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.