20 octobre 2021 Pierre Perrin-Monlouis
Innovations Improve Simplicity for End Users, Trust in Information, and Ability to Standardize on One Platform
SAN JOSE, Calif. and PARIS – October 3, 2005 – Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ; Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 – BOB), the world’s leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the launch of BusinessObjects™ XI Release 2, the latest version of BusinessObjects XI, the industry’s most advanced and complete business intelligence platform. Significant enhancements and new capabilities in BusinessObjects XI Release 2 will improve simplicity for end users, trusted information, and the ability standardize on a single BI platform. Today Business Objects also unveiled BusinessObjects Intelligent Question™, a groundbreaking innovation that allows anyone to intuitively ask business questions and receive the correct answers, without the need to build a query or know the underlying systems or data.
“BusinessObjects XI Release 2 paves the way for the future of business intelligence and builds on the continued success of the industry’s most successful BI platform,” said John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. “Our success with BusinessObjects XI has been phenomenal – customers are rapidly adopting the platform and it has had a fantastic reception by industry influencers. Organizations continue to standardize on Business Objects because we remain laser-focused on their success and continue to deliver breakthrough innovation. With BusinessObjects XI Release 2, we offer a revolutionary new solution that puts business information into the hands of all users across every organization. We have removed obstacles to end-user adoption so that BI will reach the people who never used BI before.”
Breakthrough Innovation Brings Business Intelligence to All Business Users
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 introduces BusinessObjects Intelligent Question, a new milestone for business intelligence. This new capability provides customers with a dramatically simplified user interface that allows anyone to intuitively ask questions and quickly get the answers they need to make better business decisions. Instead of making people adapt to BI systems, they now get answers to their business questions by asking questions in straightforward business terms.
Intelligent Question allows everyday users to ask questions that range from very basic to a more in-depth investigation of business conditions. For example, a sales executive can ask “who were my top five customers from last quarter,” and then delve deeper by building more sophisticated questions like, “who were my top five customers based on net sales from my region in the past 12 months?”
For more information on Intelligent Question, please see the companion press release, “Business Objects Ushers in New Era of Business Intelligence with Launch of BusinessObjects Intelligent Question” at http://www.businessobjects.com/releases/intelligentquestion.
Users Get Answers How and Where They Work
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 provides customers with enhancements and new capabilities that make it easier to perform deeper analysis, without the need to learn sophisticated new tools.
Enhanced Web Intelligence Lets Users Synchronize Data from Multiple Sources
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 delivers significant enhancements to Web Intelligence that increase users’ power and flexibility to answer business questions. The new version of Web Intelligence substantially enriches the user experience on the web and synchronizes data from multiple sources so users can more easily perform query and analysis across these sources. Now users can bring information together from OLAP and relational databases, and seamlessly perform query and analysis on the data as if it originated from a single source.
Full Client Functionality Available on BusinessObjects XI Platform
BusinessObjects Desktop Intelligence™ allows Business Objects full client customers to move to BusinessObjects XI Release 2 and receive all of its benefits, including collaborative decision-making capabilities, sophisticated scheduling, and the BI Encyclopedia which provides business context. With Desktop Intelligence on the BusinessObjects XI platform, users have a single place to view all BI content and share it with other colleagues.
Enhanced Performance Management and New Planning Capabilities
Innovations in BusinessObjects XI Release 2 significantly enhance how data is displayed and interacted with in dashboards and scorecards. With improved data display and visual effects, customers can view more business information within dashboards and scorecards, at the same time making it simpler for users to read and interpret.
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 is integrated with performance management solutions from SRC Software, which Business Objects acquired on August 24. Customers can benefit from a broad array of performance management solutions, including BusinessObjects Budgeting, BusinessObjects Strategic Planning, and BusinessObjects Consolidations.
Business Insight People Can Trust
People across the organization from the board room to the mail room need trustworthy information to make immediate decisions to improve their organization’s performance. The increased focus on compliance across private and public organizations means that it is no longer sufficient to simply report numbers in a document. BusinessObjects XI delivered a trusted platform with unmatched stability and data credibility. With BusinessObjects XI Release 2, business users and IT managers gain unprecedented visibility into where the data comes from, how it was calculated, and how recently it was updated.
Simplified Ways to Track Data Lineage
Innovations in BusinessObjects XI Release 2 give business users a simple way to investigate data in their reports so they know it is trustworthy. Now users can quickly track which system or source information the data comes from, and understand any changes made to that data. For example, if a financial analyst receives a report of quarterly results, they can see which system the numbers came from to determine whether the data is credible. By simply clicking on a “more” button within the report, business users can automatically track data lineage without having to rely on IT.
Introducing BusinessObjects Metadata Manager
IT departments are increasingly tasked with creating a fail-safe, trustworthy BI environment – and their organization’s success depends on it. Since metadata often describes business relationships and rules, it is critical that any changes to metadata are reflected across the BI platform. BusinessObjects Metadata Manager, new in BusinessObjects XI Release 2, allows IT managers to easily unify and view metadata from across the entire BI environment. By consolidating all metadata in one place, IT managers can see how changes to the data source impact the entire BI platform and gain an extra level of trust in information.
One BI Platform: Making Standardization Easy
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 gives organizations one BI platform for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and data integration. Business Objects makes standardization easy by providing a modern services-oriented architecture and tools for easier management of the entire BI platform. The new capabilities introduced in BusinessObjects XI Release 2 provide customers with the ability to reduce costs for BI projects – from designing a data warehouse to ongoing maintenance costs.
Introducing BusinessObjects Composer: Best Practices for Data Integration Projects
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 introduces BusinessObjects Composer, a major innovation that helps IT managers to improve efficiency and quality of designing extract, transform, and load (ETL) projects. Usually ETL projects are designed in an ad hoc manner, with few best practices established along the way. When IT managers begin designing an ETL project, they must painstakingly map each data source to the business needs of end users. With BusinessObjects Composer, developers can easily document the entire ETL process and begin new ETL projects at a higher level by referring back to prior projects.
Automated BI Lifecycle Management
New features in BusinessObjects XI Release 2 allow IT managers to more easily expand and manage their existing BI deployment. Now IT managers can use automated lifecycle management to move any BI application or object, such as a report, across the development, testing, and production environments. This new capability enables organizations to reduce the cost of maintaining their BI deployments, avoid costly mistakes, and scale more easily.
Customer Migration Support
To ensure customers experience a smooth migration and receive the most value from BusinessObjects XI Release 2, Business Objects offers a variety of migration tools and services. The Business Objects professional services organization can help customers review the strategy and architecture of their current BI deployment, and the company also has a strong network of partners to assist customers with their BI strategy and migration to BusinessObjects XI Release 2. For more information go to http://www.businessobjects.com/businessobjectsxi/migration/
Praise from Industry Influencers
“BusinessObjects XI Release 2 is in perfect alignment with our strategy to transform our clients’ businesses, through a collaborative approach of delivering the right information to the right people at the right time,” said Eddie Short, vice president, Business Information Management, Capgemini. “We are particularly impressed with Intelligent Question. The interface is so intuitive that any user can now get answers quickly and easily to their most relevant business questions. It will be keenly received by our many clients looking to extend BI to a broader range of employees, for faster, more effective decisions. In addition, the latest version of Web Intelligence provides powerful data synchronization. A great example of how this new functionality can add value is in our implementation of customer-centric enterprises, an increasing area of demand. It will allow us to easily provide CRM information from any data source for one view of the customer, via a single web interface, for query and analysis. BusinessObjects XI Release 2 is a significant development, delivered on a flexible BI platform that continues to meet our clients changing needs.”
“With BusinessObjects XI Release 2, Business Objects brings promising new innovations and has all its pieces on one platform that address a wide range of end-user BI needs,” said Dan Vesset, research director business analytics of IDC. “Business Objects continues as the leading vendor in the BI tools market based on 2004 software license and maintenance revenues from query, reporting, analysis, and other BI tools. BusinessObjects XI Release 2 will help them take a step forward in bringing BI to the masses.”
Availability
BusinessObjects XI Release 2 is expected in Q4 2005.
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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™ XI, offers the BI industry’s most advanced and complete platform for reporting, query and analysis, performance management, and data integration. BusinessObjects XI includes Crystal Reports®, the industry standard for enterprise reporting. Business Objects has also 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.
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.
Safe Harbor for Forward Looking Statements
Certain sections of the press release contain forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions regarding the product release dates and features which will be included. However, these statements are not guarantees of the date of availability, which may be delayed or cancelled, or of the availability of features mentioned, which may be changed or removed prior to release. Statements such as “expected,” “planned,” or “anticipated” denote forward-looking statements, and the word “launch” refers to pre-release marketing activities and does not denote general availability. Forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. The company does not undertake any obligation to update or publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances or changes in expectations after the date of this press release.
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Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, WebIntelligence, Crystal Reports, Intelligent Question, and Desktop Intelligence are trademarks or registered trademarks of Business Objects S.A. or its affiliated companies in the United States and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.
