Customers worldwide praise BusinessObjects 6.5

Innovative. Comprehensive. Industry-leading. The best. These are some of the words customers are using to describe BusinessObjects 6.5, the newest suite of integrated business intelligence products from Business Objects.

The release extends Business Objects leadership in Web query and analysis, and completes front-end integration with the Crystal product line. Business Objects, the world`s leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, announced today that customers in 28 countries around the globe have already deployed or are deploying BusinessObjects 6.5.

Customers include: AOL, Astra Zeneca, AT&T Wireless, Apple Computer, British Airways, Deutsche Bank, Fannie Mae, General Electric, General Mills, Hitachi, Kraft Foods, MasterCard International, McDonalds, Pfizer, Putnam Investments, Quaker Oats, Siemens, Telecom Italia, T-Mobile, The Gap, Toshiba, US Army, Verizon, Vodafone and Walgreens.

"BusinessObjects 6.5 has given us one point of access for all of our business intelligence content, and excellent integration between our Crystal and Business Objects deployments," said Jonathan Rothman, director of data management for Emergency Medical Associates. "We now have one infrastructure to publish Crystal Reports and put them in dashboards powered by Business Objects. BusinessObjects 6.5 provides us with insight into data throughout our entire organisation, giving us the ability to standardise at the lowest possible total cost of ownership."

"3M has an extensive business intelligence deployment, with 10 000 users, 7 000 of which are in the US, and 3 000 across Europe.

BusinessObjects 6.5 provides users of the same report the ability to connect to several sources of data and the new WebIntelligence metric alerters are simple and effective," said Pascal Gautier, business intelligence tools and centre of excellence manager at 3M. "BusinessObjects 6.5 offers the best integration with the office automation tools, and the Unicode support is essential to our Asia Pacific deployments. With this more powerful version, we are capable of securing our investments, while continuing to reduce our total cost of ownership."

"As a Business Objects user for 10 years, we recognise the strategic value of business intelligence and believe it has played a critical role in helping us better manage the performance of our organisation," said Bill Shrieves, senior analyst at Constellation Energy.

"We look forward to taking advantage of the enhanced data integration and Web-based query and analysis functions in BusinessObjects 6.5. By extending these capabilities to more users throughout the organisation, we will provide better information access to our workforce and ultimately, increase our responsiveness to customers."

"BusinessObjects 6.5 provides our organisation with increased stability and a faster response time that truly empowers the user," said Shinichiro Nishizawa, general manager, second systems department, Matsushita Systems Software Co, Ltd.

"We found that the migration to the new version has been smooth and efficient at the production environment of our customers. BusinessObjects 6.5 provides us with a real enterprise business intelligence solution."

"BusinessObjects 6.5 is robust and reliable and has evolved to cover all of our needs," said Michel Vandroux, data warehouse manager for RCI Banque.

"BusinessObjects 6.5 offers more complete calculation features, and uses more output formats such as PDF and Excel. Extensive Unicode support is also a major advantage for our international deployment. In terms of performance, the improved scalability is considerable. It is significantly faster in the display of documents and we are very confident and happy with our BusinessObjects 6.5 migration."

"BusinessObjects 6.5 will allow Shands Healthcare to dramatically increase the scope of its BI deployment," said Gigi Lipori, assistant to the EVP/COO at Shands Healthcare. "Installation of BusinessObjects 6.5 has gone very smoothly and we are impressed with the integration between the Business Objects and Crystal products. Specifically, the Crystal integration will be a tremendous help in the transplant area where we can now deploy Crystal reports seamlessly. This allows us to focus on endeavours related to our growth, in terms of functionality and volume, instead of replacing current functionality. In addition, the strengthened Web-based query and analysis benefits all our users in the common goal of providing better care to our patients."

"Companies require integrated business intelligence solutions in order to improve enterprise performance and maintain their competitive-edge," said Mike Schiff, vice-president of data warehousing and business intelligence at Current Analysis. "With BusinessObjects 6.5, Business Objects, to the benefit of its user community, has further integrated Crystal`s product portfolio with its own BI technology and with its data integration technology. Business Objects has demonstrated that it is following the integration path and the phased implementation approach that it spelled out in the product integration roadmap that it published earlier this year."

"The rapid market adoption of BusinessObjects 6.5 is continued validation of the strength of this release," said Chris Caren, vice-president of corporate marketing for Business Objects. "BusinessObjects 6.5 is the strongest, most complete offering on the business intelligence market today. Business Objects has delivered significant product enhancements, innovative features, and completed front end integration with the Crystal product line. Companies now have a comprehensive product line that gives them the ability to standardise their BI system, while lowering total cost of ownership. The recent analyst reports and readers` choice awards bestowed on Business Objects continue to validate the strength of our products."