WALLDORF, GERMANY and PARIS and SAN JOSE, CA today announced
next steps in the successful acquisition of Business Objects
(NASDAQ: BOBJ) (Euronext Paris: ISIN code FR0004026250 - BOB),
uniting two of the technology industry's biggest brands with a
shared vision to transform the way the world works by connecting
people, information and businesses. With a broad showing of support
from shareholders and business partners, SAP and Business Objects
now embark on a road map to transform their wide lead in the market
of software for business users into leadership in the emerging
market for business performance optimization. As a first indication
of the successful pace of the companies' integration, SAP and
Business Objects also announced an initial slate of joint product
offerings, enabling deep, operational intelligence to improve
business performance for customers in multiple industries
worldwide.
On January 15, 2008, SAP announced the successful all-cash
tender offers for Business Objects S.A. securities. (See related
announcement, titled "SAP France's Cash Offers for Business Objects
Securities Are Successful.") As the global market leaders in
business software and business intelligence (BI), SAP and Business
Objects have thousands of joint customers, highlighting the
synergies that companies are already leveraging by combining the
existing products from SAP and Business Objects. With roughly 7,000
employees in the Business Objects organization and SAP unit
supporting business user applications, the combination represents a
leading organization targeting the business user market.
"With the distinct combination of best-in-class software for
performance management and analytical insight, we believe that SAP
and Business Objects have the clearest vision and the strongest
products to lead this market into the next wave of innovation with
business performance optimization," said Henning Kagermann, CEO of
SAP. "With our delivery of SAP� Business Suite on an industry-first
business process platform and the introduction of SAP� Business
ByDesign to drive new volume business in the midmarket, we have
achieved two of three major milestones in our growth strategy. SAP
is now seizing a significant opportunity to pursue the third
component of our strategy: leading the market for business user
solutions. For SAP, this is the right partner, right timing and
right market segment to acquire market-leading innovation that
enhances business value for our customers."
Business Objects Acquisition Complements Growth Strategy and
Targets Trends
The acquisition of Business Objects complements SAP's existing
growth strategy, granting immediate leadership in the market for
business user solutions -- tools and applications designed to help
companies organize and manage information to optimize everyday
business activities and improve the way employees work. It allows
SAP to reach new customers and expand its footprint in existing
accounts. SAP already has paved strong inroads into this market
with its proven solutions for governance, risk and compliance
(GRC), corporate performance management (CPM) and business
intelligence.
Growth in the business user segment is being driven by three
major trends transforming the business environment: First,
companies need to make decisions more effectively based on a
broader array of data sources from both inside and outside the
enterprise, and from structured and unstructured sources. Second,
today's business users need better tools and applications that go
beyond individual views to support collaborative decision-making.
Third, companies are seeking competitive advantage by extending
beyond their businesses to create and manage business networks with
partners, suppliers and customers.
Today, Business Objects provides the market-leading BI platform
and tools that unlock information, enable business insight,
performance management and financial management, independent of the
underlying business applications and data stores. While maintaining
and supporting this market-leading portfolio, SAP and Business
Objects will work together to build new applications to help
business users, teams and companies to better collaborate through
networks.
New Market Opportunity Emerges for Business Performance
Optimization
Together, SAP and Business Objects will tightly link business
information with business processes to enable companies to
translate insight into action. As an independent business unit of
the SAP Group, Business Objects will leverage its market leading
portfolio on top of any business application environment (SAP or
non-SAP) to meet the needs of all customers. As such, Business
Objects leverages the application and technology choices customers
have made in the past, enabling them to continue gaining value from
their investments.
When combined with the industry's only available business
process platform -- enabled by SAP Business Suite applications --
the portfolio from Business Objects will enable customers to
further optimize business performance. Today, powerful business
intelligence solutions help companies gain valuable insight and
improved decision-making, resulting in improved performance. Often,
however, companies fail to leverage the full potential value from
those decisions -- the value that can come from changing existing
processes to assure that the business operations going forward
benefit continuously from the insight and decisions taken. This
creates a gap between strategy and continuous execution
improvement.
With the power and flexibility of a business process platform,
process components can be easily adapted and recomposed. When the
Business Objects portfolio is combined with the SAP offering,
companies will be able to more easily implement process changes
resulting from strategic decisions or business events, more
efficiently execute across organizational lines, and respond to
events in real time. This effectively "closes the loop" between
strategy and execution, enabling not only better decision making,
but adjustments and optimization of business process in real time,
promising new opportunities for business performance optimization
not previously available for customers.
Further demonstrating its focus on delivering business value to
customers through innovative technology, SAP also stated that it
saw additional opportunities arising from combining Business
Objects solutions with technologies from SAP. Looking forward, the
BI platform from SAP and Business Objects will combine the core
technologies found in SAP's already successful SAP NetWeaver� BI
Accelerator (see: http://www.sapintelalliance.com ) with Business
Objects' genome in database- and application-agnostic BI
capabilities. This move promises dramatic improvements in
performance and analysis capabilities to the company's performance
optimization applications, and to customer- and partner-built
solutions built on the evolved BI platform of Business Objects.
Another opportunity for additional business value comes from
running Business Objects solutions with the SAP portfolio. Because
SAP offers natively integrated business applications across more
than 25 industries on a single, open platform -- SAP NetWeaver --
customers gain deep vertical capabilities not available from any
other provider in the market today.
"In our view, SAP customers now have a new internal 'standard'
for business intelligence and performance management," said Bruce
Richardson, chief research officer, AMR Research. "This acquisition
will help SAP achieve its goal of reaching business users. Business
Objects customers will also benefit from SAP's core strengths in
building end-to-end business processes for a wide range of
industries across the globe. If both parties continue to execute
well, this is a win-win-win for SAP/Business Objects, customers and
partners."
Complementary Cultures Yield Organizational Synergies
To spearhead the integration of combined teams, SAP will name
Business Objects CEO John Schwarz to the SAP Executive Board; Doug
Merritt, SAP corporate officer and head of the Business User
division, joins the Business Objects Executive Committee. At its
Annual General Meeting of Shareholders in May 2008, the SAP
Supervisory Board intends to propose to elect Business Objects
founder Bernard Liautaud to the SAP Supervisory Board. Until that
time, Liautaud will have an advisory role to Henning Kagermann on
aspects of strategy and integration. As part of the organization
change, existing SAP groups supporting business user applications
will move from SAP into the new Business Objects organization,
allowing closer collaboration and development efforts to bring new
offerings to market.
"SAP and Business Objects share a common vision for the future
of business intelligence," said John Schwarz, CEO of Business
Objects. "We see a world where people, processes and information
are connected in a seamless, fluid, interactive, collaborative and
insightful way. By joining forces with SAP, we gain considerable
momentum to transform this vision into a near-term reality. As we
lead the way in the evolving market for business performance
optimization, our overall commitment will be to protect our
customers' investments and enable their growth and evolution in the
face of ever changing market and business dynamics."
Joint Product Packages Offer Initial Customer Benefits
In a sign of the first benefits that the combination will bring
to customers, SAP and Business Objects today revealed nine joint
product packages that will become available this month and will be
sold by both organizations' global sales teams. These packages were
chosen to address the most common challenges facing the executive
suite today, creating the first opportunities for companies to
license, install and manage solutions from SAP and Business Objects
in a single IT investment transaction.
Among the initial packages announced for large enterprises are
Financial Performance Management; Governance, Risk and Compliance;
Visualization and Reporting; Enterprise Query, Reporting and
Analysis; Master Data Services; and Data Integration and Data
Quality Management. For small businesses and midsize companies,
packages are BusinessObjects Edge Series; SAP� Business All-in-One
with BusinessObjects Edge Standard; and Crystal Reports� Server.
(See related announcement, titled "SAP and Business Objects Unveil
First Joint Offerings.") These new packages will be offered in
addition to the existing portfolios of products available from SAP
and Business Objects, which the companies will continue to innovate
and support going forward.
Partner Community Embraces Convergence of Market Leaders
The combination of SAP and Business Objects is meeting with
positive market response. Partners of both SAP and Business Objects
are embracing the transaction, seeing opportunities to serve
additional customers and extend benefits through the combined
offerings and open approach to the market. (For further market
commentary on the merger, see addendum to this announcement, titled
"Global Ecosystem Embraces SAP Acquisition of Business
Objects.")
For more information about the SAP acquisition of Business
Objects, please see www.sap.com/press or
www.businessobjects.com/SAPacquisition.
About SAP
SAP is the world's leading provider of business software*.
Today, more than 43,400 customers in more than 120 countries run
SAP� applications -- from distinct solutions addressing the needs
of small businesses and midsize companies to suite offerings for
global organizations. Powered by the SAP NetWeaver� technology
platform to drive innovation and enable business change, SAP
software helps enterprises of all sizes around the world improve
customer relationships, enhance partner collaboration and create
efficiencies across their supply chains and business operations.
SAP solution portfolios support the unique business processes of
more than 25 industries, including high tech, retail, financial
services, healthcare and the public sector. With subsidiaries in
more than 50 countries, the company is listed on several exchanges,
including the Frankfurt stock exchange and NYSE under the symbol
"SAP." (Additional information at http://www.sap.com)
(*) SAP defines business software as comprising enterprise
resource planning and related applications such as supply chain
management, customer relationship management, product life-cycle
management and supplier relationship management.
About Business Objects
Business Objects has been a pioneer in business intelligence
(BI) since the dawn of the category. Today, as the world's leading
BI software company, Business Objects transforms the way the world
works through intelligent information. The company helps illuminate
understanding and decision-making at more than 45,000 organizations
around the globe. Through a combination of innovative technology,
global consulting and education services, and the industry's
strongest and most diverse partner network, Business Objects
enables companies of all sizes to make transformative business
decisions based on intelligent, accurate, and timely
information.
Business Objects has dual headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and
Paris, France. The company's stock is traded on both the Nasdaq
(BOBJ) and Euronext Paris (ISIN: FR0004026250 - BOB) stock
exchanges. More information about Business Objects can be found at
www.businessobjects.com.
Any statements contained in this document that are not
historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the
U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such
as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast,"
"intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will"
and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to
identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no
obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking
statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various
risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ
materially from expectations. The factors that could affect SAP's
future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings
with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including
SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC.
Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these
forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.
This press release contains forward-looking statements
concerning the anticipated benefits and synergies of the
acquisition, the companies' anticipated combined operations,
product offerings and services, Business Objects' ability to
protect customers' investments and to continue to innovate and
support existing product portfolios, and the timing of the
availability of joint product offerings. Actual events or results
may differ materially from those described in this release due to a
number of risks and uncertainties. These potential risks and
uncertainties include, among others, integration-related risks,
customer and partner uncertainty regarding the anticipated benefits
of the transaction, , the failure to retain key Business Objects
employees, the failure of SAP and Business Objects to achieve the
anticipated synergies of the acquisition and other risks detailed
in Business Objects' SEC filings, including those discussed in
Business Objects' quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter
ended September 30, 2007, which is on file with the SEC and
available at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov. Business Objects is
not obligated to update these forward-looking statements to reflect
events or circumstances after the date of this document. The
Business Objects logo, BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Crystal
Decisions, Intelligent Question, and Xcelsius are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Business Objects in the United States
and/or other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be
trademarks of their respective owners.
Copyright � 2008 SAP AG. All rights reserved.
SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver and other
SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their
respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG
in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All
other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of
their respective companies. Data contained in this document serve
informational purposes only. National product specifications may
vary.
Note to editors:
For free video content about SAP, please log onto
www.thenewsmarket.com/sap to preview and request video. You can
receive broadcast-standard video digitally or by tape from this
site. Registration and video is free to the media.
Embedded Video Available
Image Available:
http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=666784 Embedded
Video Available:
http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=349246
For customers interested in learning more about SAP products:
Global Customer Center: +49 180 534-34-24 United States Only: 1
(800) 872-1SAP (1-800-872-1727) For more information, press only:
Herbert Heitmann SAP +49 (6227) 7-61137 Email Contact CET Christoph
Liedtke SAP +49 6227 7-50383 Email Contact CET Lindsey Held +1
(650) 320-3542 Email Contact PST Andy Kendzie +1 202 312-3919 Email
Contact EST SAP Press Office +49 (6227) 7-46315 CET +1 (610)
661-3200, EST Email Contact Sabrina Guttman Business Objects +1 408
953 6326 Email Contact PDT Philippe Laguerre Business Objects +33
(1) 41 25 38 15 Email Contact CET Add SAP press offices (both
locations) For more information, financial analysts only: Stefan
Gruber SAP +49 (6227) 7-44872 Email Contact CET Martin Cohen SAP +1
(212) 653-9619 Email Contact EST
Business Objects . (NASDAQ:BOBJ)
Historical Stock Chart
From Nov 2024 to Dec 2024
Business Objects . (NASDAQ:BOBJ)
Historical Stock Chart
From Dec 2023 to Dec 2024
