Business Objects Launches BusinessObjects BW Connect

Business Objects, one of the world's leading providers of e-business intelligence (e-BI) solutions, announced the general availability of BusinessObjects BW Connect, a new interface to SAP BW data.

SAP has certified BusinessObjects BW Connect for enterprise query, reporting, and analysis against SAP Business Information Warehouse (BW) version 2.0. This certification was conducted at SAP's headquarter laboratories in Walldorf, Germany, and involved testing using SAP-defined processes and controls. Customers using SAP will now be able to use BusinessObjects BW Connect, a new, SAP-certified tool to access valuable SAP data, create and analyze reports on this data, and share these reports with other users throughout the enterprise.

BusinessObjects BW Connect enables users to access SAP BW data and combine it with other corporate information, easily publish reports to the Web, and integrate with the full Business Objects e-business intelligence suite.

Multi-source data integration in one report. BW Connect provides a flexible, data warehouse neutral solution enabling easy access to SAP BW data. In addition, users can meet their enterprise reporting needs by seamlessly combining their SAP BW information with data from other sources into the same BusinessObjects report. This is crucial in today's enterprise deployments where organizations have data stored in multiple locations, and a user is likely to create a report that includes data from relational, multidimensional, and personal files.

One-step Web publishing. BW Connect provides users with one-step Web publishing of their reports, enabling users to view and refresh reports with BusinessObjects InfoView, the company's business intelligence portal. In addition, BW Connect enables users to pull SAP BW data into their desktop reports and then continue to work while disconnected from the BW server, reading and analyzing reports disconnected from any location.

Complete range of e-BI functionality. BusinessObjects BW Connect provides users with access to the powerful enterprise BI functionality found in BusinessObjects 2000, the company's strategic business intelligence (BI) platform and integrated BI toolset. Because BW Connect is completely integrated with BusinessObjects 2000, users have access to enterprise reporting, analysis, and Web distribution features as well as a powerful, distributed component architecture for broadcasting, enterprise scaleability, and extranet security.

"This certification from SAP demonstrates the significant value that our products can bring to SAP Business Information Warehouse users," said Mark Tice, group vice president of global alliances. "Our ongoing commitment to working closely with SAP is evident in our release of BusinessObjects BW Connect, a new product specifically designed for SAP BW customers, and we are extremely pleased to receive certification on our interface to SAP BW 2.0."

"St. Lawrence Cement was the first SAP Business Warehouse implementation in Canada. Being an 85 percent SAP organization, we chose SAP BW as our main data warehouse platform and saw it as being the key to our corporate business report process," said Adelinde Tauchner, BW Project Manager, St. Lawrence Cement. "In the same process, we chose BusinessObjects as our corporate business intelligence suite of tools, specifically due to its close integration with SAP and its BW platform."

Availability

BusinessObjects BW Connect is based on the integration of technology from OLAP@Work, the Canadian-based company acquired by Business Objects in April 2000, with the Business Objects product line. The product is generally available.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is one of the world's leading providers 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 e-business 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 over 11,500 customers in more than 80 countries. Business Objects can be reached at 408-953-6000 and www.BusinessObjects.com.

Contact Business Objects, Mike Bendel, 408-953-6056, mbendel@businessobjects.com.