SAN JOSE, Calif. & PARIS, Nov. 15, 2005 -- Business Objects (Nasdaq:BOBJ)(Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the availability of Crystal Xcelsius(TM). Crystal Xcelsius allows users to turn ordinary Excel spreadsheets into interactive visual analytics that display business information in a variety of dramatic, engaging styles. With the launch of Crystal Xcelsius, Business Objects offers customers a unique way to gain the most value from personal and corporate information. Crystal Xcelsius is based on technology obtained through the acquisition of Infommersion, Inc., completed November 1, 2005.

"Business Objects understands that customers want highly visual and interactive BI at their fingertips -- and Crystal Xcelsius is the next step in delivering that kind of revolutionary simplicity," said Rene Bonvanie, chief marketing officer at Business Objects. "We just launched BusinessObjects(TM) Intelligent Question(TM), which brings BI to every worker -- regardless of technical skill or job title. With Crystal Xcelsius, Business Objects arms any Excel user with a powerful and easy-to-use BI solution. By providing simpler ways to visualize, share, and interact with information, Business Objects continues to break down the barriers to BI and reach a whole new category of users."

Crystal Xcelsius provides business users with "point and click" simplicity that allows them to collaborate with colleagues, reach consensus faster, and improve productivity. For example, a sales manager can transform an Excel spreadsheet representing quarterly results from the Northeast region into an interactive presentation, such as a map or graph. This presentation can then be shared with team members or executives via PowerPoint, PDF, Outlook, and the web. Because the presentation is interactive, team members can test out different scenarios within the presentation and immediately see potential outcomes. The eye-catching visualization technology of Crystal Xcelsius allows business users to more powerfully communicate their analysis, make recommendations, and collaborate to improve performance.

Customers Praise Crystal Xcelsius

Currently, thousands of organizations rely on Crystal Xcelsius. Following are comments from some Crystal Xcelsius users:

"Crystal Xcelsius is one of the most innovative products I've seen for many years," Rick Hutley, senior director of Internet Business Solutions Group at Cisco Systems, Inc. "We are big fans of Crystal Xcelsius and use it extensively to support business modeling and impact assessment for our customers. We have found that presenting our analysis and findings to our customers using Crystal Xcelsius has dramatically improved our ability to present complex ideas in a highly impactful way."

"Crystal Xcelsius enables us to communicate more effectively with our members," said Mike Croghan, director of electronic communications with Affordable Care. "Using Crystal Xcelsius, we can provide our clients with real-time, actionable information. Affordable Care is growing 20 percent per year, and we're confident that Crystal Xcelsius will help fuel that growth. We're excited about the combination of Crystal Xcelsius with Business Objects. Together these solutions address the BI needs of a growing company, like ours."

"Crystal Xcelsius helps us to be better stewards of our resources and ensure our continued growth," said William Elger, executive director of administration and chief financial officer, University of Michigan Medical School. "Now we can easily to present useful and relevant information in compelling ways. Crystal Xcelsius provides interactive visual analytics that help our medical school departments to better monitor and manage operations, ultimately allowing us to make more informed business decisions."

"Crystal Xcelsius has revolutionized the way we present complex engineering calculations," said Frank Bennardo, founder and owner of Engineering Express. "Using Crystal Xcelsius, we've built a series of interactive, visual calculators that let engineers perform mandatory structural calculations quickly and easily. This gives engineers visual cues that indicate compliance with the latest safety specifications, including new natural disaster-preparedness guidelines established after last year's hurricane season. Now we can explore potential scenarios, such as what would happen to a structure as wind speed increases, and what adjustments would allow the structure to withstand stronger winds."

Widespread Partner Support for Crystal Xcelsius

Business Objects has built the largest and most comprehensive partner network in the business intelligence industry, and will actively promote and sell Crystal Xcelsius through its channel partners. Business Objects channel partners include technology, OEM, VAR, and volume resellers or distributors, and extend across all major vertical industries. Crystal Xcelsius is already generating significant partner praise, including:

"With Crystal Xcelsius, our customers can open up the benefits of BI to even more employees across their organization," said Harry Zoberman, senior vice president, marketing and operations at ASAP Software. "The strong combination of ASAP's expertise in software licensing services and Business Objects' business intelligence offerings appeals to a wide variety of customers. With this new solution, Business Objects provides the breadth of functionality required by our enterprise customers, while allowing the flexibility to meet the constraints of our mid-market customers. Plus, the price point makes this an attractive offering for all our customers."

"With the addition of Crystal Xcelsius to Business Objects BI solutions, now our small and medium-sized customers have a full range of BI tools available to them," said Michael Carioti, manager of marketing development at PROVANTAGE Corporation. "Our customers increasingly need a simple way to turn raw data into actionable information -- and Crystal Xcelsius delivers. Crystal Xcelsius is one more solution that extends the benefits of BI to non-technical users and pushes BI further across our customers' organizations."

"Crystal Xcelsius is a groundbreaking new product that gives any business user a simple way to impress colleagues with interactive data presentation," said Gertrud Pillay, senior director at PC Mall, Inc. "Because this product is made to work on top of Excel spreadsheets -- and Excel is ubiquitous in most organizations -- Crystal Xcelsius will increase our market opportunity within our existing customer base. We're also impressed by the range of Crystal Xcelsius: it can either be a foot in the door for some companies to start deploying BI, or a fantastic way to add value and extend the use of existing BI deployments. "

Web Seminar for Business Objects Partners

On November 15, 2005 at 11:00 am ET, Business Objects will host a web seminar for partners entitled "Significantly Increase your Sales & Margin with Crystal Xcelsius." This web seminar will discuss the benefits Crystal Xcelsius offers Business Objects partners and their customers. Organizations will also learn how to join the Business Objects partner network. To register for the web seminar please visit: www.businessobjects.com/cx/seminar/partners/.

Availability and Pricing

Crystal Xcelsius is available now directly from the Business Objects eStore, which can be found at www.businessobjects.com. Crystal Xcelsius can also be purchased from its channel partners. More information, including pricing, can be found at www.businessobjects.com.

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 also built the industry's strongest and most diverse partner community, and the company 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.

Business Objects and the Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, WebIntelligence, Crystal Xcelsius, Crystal Reports, and Crystal Enterprise 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.

Business Objects
Robin Meyerhoff, 408-943-6714
robin.meyerhoff@businessobjects.com
or
Eastwick Communications
Katie Zack, 650-480-4041
katie@eastwick.com