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Business Objects (a.k.a. BO, BOBJ) is a French enterprise software company, specializing in business intelligence (BI). Since 2007, it has been a part of SAP AG. The company claimed more than 46,000 customers worldwide in its final earnings release^[1]. Its 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 its business intelligence projects.

Throughout the world databases are interrogated, or queried, using a language called SQL. But SQL is useful only to those experienced in using it, and with knowledge of relational data theory – not to mention knowledge of the structure and contents of the particular database they wish to query.

Business Objects comes to the rescue by offering the layman an easy-to-understand view of a given database, expressed in business terms; and a toolset to provide an equally simplified means of querying it and formatting the results into reports. Views, referred to as universes, are created by IT specialists using another Business objects toolset.

Other Business Objects toolsets enable universes, and ready-written reports, to be stored centrally and made selectively available to communities of password-protected usernames.

History

Bernard Liautaud, the chairman and chief strategy officer co-founded Business Objects in 1990 together with Denis Payre and was chief executive officer until September 2005. In 1991, the first customer, France Télécom, was signed. The company went public on NASDAQ in September 1994, making it the first French software company listed in the United States.^{[citation needed]} In 2002, the company made Time Magazine Europe's Digital Top 25 of 2002 and were BusinessWeek Europe Stars of Europe.

On 7 October 2007, SAP AG announced^[2] that it would acquire Business Objects for $6.8B. As of 22 January 2008, the corporation is fully operated by SAP; this is seen as part of a growing consolidation trend in the business software industry, with Oracle acquiring Hyperion in 2007 and IBM acquiring Cognos in 2008.

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 was traded on both the Nasdaq and Euronext Paris (BOB) stock exchanges.

Timeline

• 1990, launched BusinessObjects Skipper SQL 2.0.x
• 1994, launched BusinessObjects v3.0 and went public on the NASDAQ — the first European company 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.
• 2001, Signs up its single largest global software licensing transaction with Three formerly known as Hutchinson 3G.
• 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 Software (formerly Armstrong Laing Group).
• 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 announced close of Cartesis acquisition.
• 2007, on 5 July 2007 Business Objects announced close of Inxight acquisition.
• 2007, on 6 September 2007 Business Objects announced 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.
• 2008, On 22 January SAP absorbed all of Business Objects offices, and renaming the entity "Business Objects, an SAP company".
• 2009, Business Objects became a division of SAP instead of a separate company. The portfolio brand "SAP BusinessObjects" was created. All employees now officially work for SAP.

Products

• BusinessObjects XI (XI 3.1 is the latest version)

• common services simplifying 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.
• Infoview

• 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.

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.^[3][4]

References

External links

• SAP BusinessObjects portfolio