Brio Software Announces Brio Performance Suite 8

Company Takes the Lead in Integrating Business Intelligence and Enterprise Reporting Technologies

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 4, 2002 -- Brio Software, Inc., a leading provider of next-generation business intelligence tools, today announced Brio Performance Suite(TM) 8, the first product to answer the market's demand for a fully integrated business intelligence and enterprise reporting tool. By combining the knowledge discovery and interactivity of its business intelligence technologies with the authoring and publishing capabilities of its SQR(TM) reporting tools, Brio is able to give customers the broadest tool set for the creation, management and distribution of enterprise information.

"Brio's vision is to bring business intelligence to the masses," said Jim Guthrie, executive vice president of development for Brio Software. "As the only business intelligence vendor with an enterprise reporting product, Brio is uniquely qualified to combine the best of both worlds and lead the convergence of these two technologies."

According to Gartner research, "Enterprise business intelligence suites and robust reporting have remained distinct for years, yet have competed for many of the same customers. Now, at last, there are definite signs that the two will become one. Primary causes of this convergence include a desire for: a reduction in the complexity of systems; improved ease of use and integration for these overlapping technologies; and decreased costs of support, license fees, maintenance and training."*

Brio has been widely recognized by industry analysts as the ease-of-use leader in the business intelligence market. With Brio Performance Suite 8, the company has advanced the product's intuitive interface while adding a powerful underlying enterprise-ready architecture to tie everything together. The company is now offering a suite that is simple enough to be installed, implemented and maintained by a small department, but also has the high-performing infrastructure that can easily scale to the needs of an organization of any size.

"Our research indicates that enterprises are looking for analytic solutions that combine the problem solving capabilities of ad hoc query and analysis, enterprise reporting and metrics-based analysis," said David Folger, vice president, META Group. "Giving knowledge workers more options for solving complex business issues with existing information assets, ultimately leads to business performance improvements."

Comprehensive Integrated Business Intelligence Suite

Brio Performance Suite 8 spans the three essential functions of business intelligence software including:

-- Enterprise Reporting - SQR is the industry-standard language and tool for generating high-volume, presentation-quality reports with unparalleled performance;

-- Ad Hoc Reporting and Analysis - Insight Server(TM) gives users the ability to analyze and dissect complex issues;

-- Global Information Delivery - Intelligence iServer(TM), Reports iServer(TM), and Knowledge Server(TM) deliver personalized reports, analyses and unstructured information across the enterprise through a browser-only interface.

Brio Performance Suite's zero-footprint, browser-based query, analysis, reporting, and administration meet the needs of users inside and outside the organization. For instance, partners may receive regularly scheduled reports in the form of HTML or Adobe Acrobat(R) files. When they need to do further analysis on the data behind the report they simply click the report and are able to create charts and pivots, and share their new information from a common browser interface.

Common, Sophisticated Foundation

The key to the tight integration of this suite is a server architecture that simplifies query, analysis, report generation, publishing, updating, archiving, scheduling, and delivering of personalized reports and analytical content to thousands of concurrent users anywhere. The suite's distributed and replicated J2EE-compliant architecture enables fast data access to heterogeneous platforms increasing performance and scalability.

Brio has established a highly interactive and personalized user interface that is consistent across the entire Brio Performance Suite, including the end user and analysis tools. Brio believes that the entire process -- from administration to analysis -- should be equally straightforward.

Brio Performance Suite 8 is also able to connect to external security mechanisms including LDAP, Active Directory, NT Domains, Netegrity SiteMinder(R) and custom systems.

Quickest Time-to-Value, Lowest Total Cost of Ownership

In today's economy, any new piece of software needs to provide fast deployment and quick time-to-value. Brio Performance Suite 8 builds on the company's history of delivering the industry's lowest overall total cost of ownership. The product line installs in as little as one day to provide immediate delivery of reports and analyses. On average, Brio Performance Suite 8 requires three hours or less of training per employee and the fewest number of administrators to run the system -- typically two administrators for a 5,000 person implementation.

Equally important for customers is Brio's collection of open access tools that can quickly leverage existing data sources. These solutions work out of the box in the broadest range of IT environments, including heterogeneous data sources, operating systems, and applications, resulting in fast and easy deployment and greater flexibility to meet a customer's changing needs.

"At Aventis, our researchers are constantly pulling metadata from the Chemical-Biology data sources in search of new medicines," said Dominique Herve, director DI&A IS at Aventis France. "We have already seen undeniable productivity gains using the Brio Performance Suite. With Brio Performance Suite 8's thin-client method of requesting objects, our scientists will be able to search, visualize, mine and exploit multiple molecular structures and their associated data at the same time, which will only further improve our productivity."

Pricing and Availability

Brio Performance Suite 8 has been shipped to a limited set of initial customers, and will be generally available in December 2002. The product will debut at Brio's worldwide user conference in San Diego on November 7, 2002. Attendees will see a demonstration of Brio Performance Suite 8, learn more about the product at interactive track sessions with Brio developers and product managers, and take a hands-on "test drive" at Brio's Solution Showcase. For more information on attending Brio 2002: The Business Performance Summit, visit http://www.brio.com/brio2002/evite, or call 800-683-6067 (from within the US) or +1-415-446-7713 (from outside the US).

A Brio Performance Suite 8 upgrade may be included as part of an existing Brio customer's current support and maintenance contract. For more information on upgrade and migration, existing customers should contact their Brio sales representative or authorized Brio reseller.

* Gartner "Enterprise BI Suites and Reporting: Convergence at Last", H. Dresner, September, 2002.

About Brio Software

Brio Software helps Global 3000 companies achieve breakthrough business performance with the industry's most comprehensive collection of business intelligence tools. Widely recognized as the easiest-to-use and deploy solution in the industry, the Brio Performance Suite combines Insight Server's and Intelligence iServer's advanced query and analysis technologies with powerful information delivery through Reports iServer (which is based on the industry-standard SQR reporting technology). Brio Metrics Builder provides an interactive, real-time metrics analysis environment that lets businesses define their own performance criteria and then measure progress against these pre-set metrics. Used by 75 of the Fortune 100 and more than 2 million people, Brio products empower individuals, workgroups and executives to turn enterprise information into actionable insight, resulting in superior decisions and business performance. Founded in 1989, and headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, Brio products and services can be found around the globe at http://www.brio.com .

The statements in this press release regarding the Brio Performance Suite are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, changes in customer requirements, differences in customer implementations of Brio Performance Suite, changes in Brio's business strategy, as well as Brio's future product direction and general economic conditions. For a more complete discussion of risk factors that could affect Brio's current and future operating results, see the discussions in Brio's reports filed with the SEC from time to time, including but not limited to Brio's Annual Report on Form 10-K/A for the year ended March 31, 2002 filed with the SEC on June 5, 2002 and Brio's quarterly report on form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2002, filed with the SEC on August 14, 2002.

NOTE: The Brio Performance Suite, SQR, Insight Server, Intelligence iServer, Reports iServer, Brio Metrics Builder and DDO are trademarks of Brio Software. All other company and product names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

SOURCE Brio Software, Inc.

Web Site: http://www.brio.com