Crystal Decisions' Crystal Analysis Professional Provides Analytic Application Front-End for iBaan Business Intelligence SolutionAgreement extends the two companies’ strategic alliance, enabling Baan customers to perform powerful multidimensional reporting and analysis PALO ALTO, CA—October 29, 2001—Crystal Decisions, an information infrastructure company that is a market leader in reporting, analysis and information delivery, and Baan – the global provider of B2B collaborative commerce solutions and a unit of the Invensys Software Systems division of Invensys plc - announced today that the Crystal Analysis Professional On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) tool now provides an analytic application front-end for the iBaan Business Intelligence Solution. Crystal Analysis Professional will give customers the ability to translate the multidimensional data in the iBaan Business Intelligence Solution into easy-to-understand web-based reports for interactive viewing. This announcement follows on the heels of a Best of Show award conferred on Crystal Analysis Professional by Penton’s Windows 2000 Magazine Network at Microsoft Tech Ed 2001. That award and the rapid acceptance of Crystal Analysis Professional in the marketplace reflect the product’s innovative presentation of OLAP data in simple snapshots requiring no complex manipulations, opening the value of multidimensional analysis to every business manager in an enterprise. “We are pleased that Crystal Analysis Professional is available to our customers for viewing the information built by the iBaan Business Intelligence Solution because, in our opinion, it offers one of the most user-friendly interfaces and intuitive navigation of any comparable tool on the market,” said Henk de Ruiter, Senior Vice President for Alliances and Marketing at Baan. “The combination of business content and a user specific interface means that we can take a step towards offering our customers a series of Analytic Applications in the domains of finance, inventory, sales, purchasing to name just a few. This is of significant value to our customers who are looking for a packaged Business Intelligence solution instead of purely a technology offering.” The availability of Crystal Analysis Professional for the iBaan Business Intelligence Solution also extends the strategic relationship established between Baan and Crystal Decisions last year. That relationship has resulted in the development of the Crystal Enterprise Solution Kit for Baan, a solution that provides native access to information stored in iBaan enterprise systems for use with Crystal Decisions’ best-of-breed Crystal Reports reporting application and Crystal Enterprise information distribution platform. Crystal Decisions has added more than 100 Baan customers to its portfolio since that solution kit was completed. “With last year’s embrace of Crystal Reports, and now with Crystal Analysis Professional, Baan is continuing to provide its customers with best-of-breed technologies. And through a joint initiative, the needs of Baan customers will continue to be met in future releases of Crystal Analysis Professional,” said Janet Wood, vice president of business development for Crystal Decisions. “Since both applications use our Crystal Enterprise platform to handle information delivery, users can employ the same distribution mechanism in both their ERP and OLAP environments and thereby simplify the process of sharing critical business information throughout the enterprise.” Baan’s Business Intelligence Solution offers a strategic business information framework provides manufacturing organizations with a comprehensive out-of-the-box solution that helps reduce business intelligence time implementation time and effort. Crystal Analysis Professional is available through the channel from various resellers and directly from Crystal Decisions. More information is available at www.crystaldecisions.com or by phoning 1-604-681-3435 (International) or 1-800-877-2340 (U.S. and Canada). The iBaan Business Intelligence Solution is part of the iBaan suite of Internet-enabled solutions that combines proven Baan technology with new developments that enable customers to take significant steps towards seamlessly integrating systems and processes. It provides end-users with personalised and easy-to-use information, and empowers businesses to collaborate with their customers and suppliers over the Internet. About Baan For more information, please visit http://www.baan.com About Invensys plc About Crystal Decisions For more information, please contact: Kristine Berry Alex Bell, IBA
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