Business Objects (company)

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Business Objects SA

Type
Founded	1990
Headquarters	San Jose, California and Paris, France
Key people	John Schwarz, CEO Bernard Liautaud, Chairman and Founder
Industry	Computer software
Products	Crystal Reports BusinessObjects XI Release 2
Revenue	$1.077 billion USD (2005)
Employees	4,977 (as of Q2 2006)
Website	www.businessobjects.com

Business Objects is a French enterprise software company, specializing in business intelligence (BI). It is now part of SAP AG. The company claims more than 42,000 customers worldwide. Their flagship product is BusinessObjects XI, with components that provide performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. Like many enterprise software companies, Business Objects also offers consulting and education services to help customers deploy their business intelligence projects.

On Oct 7, 2007, SAP AG announced^[1] that it will acquire Business Objects for $6.8B. This is seen as part of a growing consolidation trend in the business software industry. IBM has announced it will acquire Cognos and earlier this year Hyperion was acquired by Oracle.

Business Objects had two headquarters in San Jose, California, and Paris, France despite the fact that the biggest office was in Vancouver, BC. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq and Euronext Paris (BOB) stock exchanges. Its founder is Bernard Liautaud. The company is now under the flag of SAP AG and, as of January 22nd 2008, the corporation was fully operated by SAP.

1 History
2 Products
3 Legal
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The company was founded in 1990 in Paris, and in 1991, signed its first customer, France Télécom.

1990, launched BusinessObjects Skipper SQL 2.0.x
1994, launched BusinessObjects v3.0 and went public on the NASDAQ — the first European company in history to do so.
1995, Business Objects was the first to focus on enterprise-scale BI deployments.
1996, entered the OLAP market and launched BusinessObjects v4.0. Bernard Liautaud was named one of Business Week's "Hottest Entrepreneurs of the Year."
1997, crossed the $100M chasm and pioneered the business intelligence (BI) extranet market. Introduced WebIntelligence.
1999, its #1 customer today, General Electric (GE), started working with the company. Also went public in France on the Premier Marché. Acquired Next Action Technologies.
2000, delivered the industry's first interactive mobile BI solution. Acquired OLAP@Work.
2001, opened San Jose, Calif., office; and SAP signed an OEM and reseller agreement to bundle Crystal Reports. Acquired Blue Edge Software.
2002, acquired Acta Technologies. Bernard Liautaud was named to Business Week's "Stars of Europe," and the company was named one of the "100 Fastest Growing Tech Companies" by Business 2.0.
2003, acquired Crystal Decisions. Also released Dashboard Manager, BusinessObjects Enterprise 6, and BusinessObjects Performance Manager.
2004, launched new combined company with the slogan, "Our Future is Clear, Crystal Clear." Launched Crystal v10 and BusinessObjects v6.5
2005, launched BusinessObjects XI, acquired SRC Software, Infommersion, and Medience. Launched BusinessObjects Enterprise XI Release 2.
2006, on 8 February 2006 Business Objects acquired Firstlogic, Inc.
2006, acquired ALG.
2006, on 30 November 2006 Business Objects acquired Nsite Software, Inc.
2006, launched Crystal Xcelsius, which allows users to transform Microsoft Excel spreadsheet data into interactive Flash media files.
2007, on 23 April 2007 Business Objects announced their intention to buy Cartesis (a vendor of reporting and planning software) and Konak.
2007, on 22 May 2007 Business Objects announced their intention to acquire Inxight Software.
2007, on 1 Jun 2007 Business Objects announces close of Cartesis acquisition.
2007, on 5 July 2007 Business Objects announces close of Inxight acquisition.
2007, on 6 September 2007 Business Objects announces their intention to acquire FUZZY! Informatik AG.
2007, on 7 October SAP's Chief Executive Henning Kagermann announced a $6.8 billion deal to acquire Business Objects. The deal is expected to be closed in 2008.
2008, On 22 January SAP absorbed all of Business Objects offices eliminating the corporation's name. As of this point BOBJ is no more and the employees officially work for SAP.

[edit] Products

BusinessObjects XI (XI Release 3 is the latest version)

common services to simplify deployment and management of BI tools
reporting
query and analysis allows for self-service reporting.
Enterprise Information Management (EIM) integrates and improves data to create a trusted foundation for business decisions. Creates a basis for querying and analysis through ETL or EII.
Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) helps users align with strategy by tracking and analyzing key business metrics and goals via management dashboards, scorecards, analytics, and alerting.
Enterprise Reporting (Crystal Reports) access, format, and deliver information to large populations of users.

Data Visualization (Crystal Xcelsius) turns static data (from Business Objects XI, databases, Excel spreadsheets) into dashboards and presentations filled with dynamic charts and graphics.

Business Intelligence OnDemand — on-demand (or SaaS) BI software that is hosted on the web by Business Objects.

[edit] Legal

On April 2, 2007 a lawsuit from Informatica (inherited by BOBJ from the purchase of Acta Technologies in 2002) resulted in an award of $25 million in damages to Informatica for patent infringement. The lawsuit related to embedded data flows with one input and one output. Informatica asserted that the ActaWorks product (now sold by BOBJ as part of Data Integrator), infringed several Informatica patents including U.S. Patent Nos. 6,014,670 and 6,339,775, both titled "Apparatus and Method for Performing Data Transformations in Data Warehousing." BOBJ subsequently released a new version of Data Integrator (11.7.2) removing the infringing product capability.^[2]^[3]