Business Objects Joins Lawson Software EAA

Business Objects, a leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, announces Lawson Software selected Business Objects for membership into the Lawson Enterprise Analytic Alliance.

The Enterprise Analytic Alliance (EAA) is a framework to help Lawson clients network with certified and experienced Lawson partners for implementing Lawson's analytical applications. Lawson partners can then help customers implement Lawson's analytic applications, and/or extend the customer's current data warehousing products. EAA partners are chartered to help Lawson customers implement analytic solutions within project timeframes, to help increase return on their e-business intelligence investment.

Lawson selected Business Objects to be a member of the alliance based on the following reasons:

• BusinessObjects can pull data from multiple data sources including Lawson's online transaction processing (OLTP) tables and analytical applications.
• Business Objects provides pre-built rapid deployment templates (RDTs) that enable quick deployment of decision support for Lawson's customers.
• BusinessObjects supports both Hyperion Essbase and Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 OLAP services which are Lawson's OLAP Solutions Development Partners.

EAA membership provides visibility and promotion for Lawson partners who provide products and services within the analytical application market. Members offer expertise in areas of consulting, project management, installation, conversions, data warehousing, interfacing, rollout, technology implementation & integration, as well as services around Lawson's e-business engines: financial, human resources, distribution, and procurement.

Lawson Software is a leading provider of Web-deployable, enterprise-wide, client/server business applications. BusinessObjects technology easily extracts data from lawson.insight e-business engines. BusinessObjects and Lawson applications leverage built-in expertise, protecting sensitive data across the enterprise, and maintaining information technology (IT) control.

BusinessObjects is the full-client e-BI tool that enables customers to access, analyze, and share company data. Business Objects expects to simultaneously support Lawson analytic applications with its thin-client e-BI tool, WebIntelligence, and BusinessObjects later this year. Business Objects recently demonstrated WebIntelligence with Lawson enterprise analytic applications at the Lawson Software Conference and User Exchange (CUE) 2000.

"We are pleased Business Objects is a member of the Enterprise Analytic Alliance. Business Objects is the only vendor with out-of-the-box integration," said Eric Lopez, vice president of global financial and analytic solutions at Lawson Software. "We have many joint customers already, and this provides further validation that Business Objects is aligned with Lawson to expand our e-business offerings."

"Business Objects was the first company to be independently certified as part of Lawson's GAIN partner program. We are excited to extend our relationship with our entry into the Enterprise Analytic Alliance," said Mark Tice, vice president of global alliances at Business Objects. "Our membership is symbolic of our commitment with Lawson to provide industry-leading ebusiness intelligence to customers in markets such as healthcare, retail, professional services, and e-business."

About Business Objects

Business Objects is a leading provider of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions. The company coined the term e-business intelligence in 1998 to describe the intersection of business intelligence and the Internet. Using ebusiness intelligence, organizations can access, analyze, and share information in intranet, extranet, and e-business environments. In intranets, the company's products provide employees with information to make better business decisions, and are used in environments ranging from workgroups of 20 users to enterprise deployments exceeding 20,000. In the extranet environment, the company is pioneering the use of e-BI in applications that allow organizations to build stronger relationships by linking customers, partners, and suppliers via the Internet. In addition, the company's products can improve the performance of an e-business by providing reporting and analysis against the ever-expanding amount of transaction and profile data that is collected each day throughout the World Wide Web.

Founded in 1990, Business Objects pioneered the modern business intelligence industry by inventing and patenting a "semantic layer" that insulates users from the technical complexity of database systems. Today, the company has sold more than 1,683,000 licenses to over 9,700 organizations in more than 80 countries. Business Objects can be reached at 408-953-6000 and www.businessobjects.com.