With the addition of the Cartesis solutions, Business Objects can now provide its customers with a complete set of enterprise performance management (EPM) applications, delivering a comprehensive and powerful suite to the marketplace. The portfolio includes planning and budgeting, profitability and analytics, financial reporting and consolidations, and governance, risk, and compliance solutions.

“The close of this acquisition underscores our deep commitment to establishing the broadest, most open and integrated portfolio of performance management solutions in the industry,” said John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. “Our customers will benefit from the combination of the Business Objects and Cartesis functionality, enabling wide-ranging business insight and performance management for the CFO and CIO. I am delighted to welcome Cartesis to the Business Objects team.”

The acquisition was an all-cash transaction of approximately €225M (approximately $300M). Cartesis will become a part of the Business Objects Enterprise Performance Management product line organization. Mark Doll, senior vice president and general manager of Global Services and EPM for Business Objects, and Didier Benchimol, CEO of Cartesis, will lead the integration.

“This year’s winners are representative of the leading organizations that are using our enterprise performance management solutions to address their most challenging organizational issues,” said Mark Doll, senior vice president and general manager of EPM and global services at Business Objects. “I am pleased to recognize these organizations, and congratulate them on their innovative use of planning, budgeting, forecasting, and profitability solutions to improve their organization’s performance.”

Following is a brief description of this year’s award categories and the winners:

Enterprise Wide Deployment – Catholic Healthcare West

With 41 hospitals and medical centers across California, Arizona, and Nevada, Catholic Healthcare West (CHW) is the eighth-largest hospital system in the United States. Even in the midst of rapid growth, CHW hasn’t lost sight of its core values of dignity, collaboration, justice, stewardship, and excellence. However, due to revenue constraints, staffing shortages, and pressure to keep healthcare affordable, CHW must constantly find new ways to increase its efficiency and cost-effectiveness. By implementing Business Objects solutions, CHW sought to streamline and standardize its budgeting process, distribute budgets efficiently, enhance communication throughout all levels of the organization, and improve the reliability of budget information.

Business Innovation – North Fork Bank

North Fork Bank needed a solution that would improve data integrity and calculation accuracy, consolidate and streamline the incentive management process, and be able to handle both financial and non-financial data critical to its incentive program. Using BusinessObjectsâ„¢ Incentive Compensation Management, North Fork Bank has gained the ability to conduct advanced modeling and analyses, while reducing the overall processing time for its program. In addition, since the solution is automated, North Fork Bank has improved data integrity and calculation accuracy.

Financial Performance – The Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group is a private global investment firm that manages 48 investment funds across buyouts, venture and growth capital, real estate, and leveraged finance. Before Business Objects their budgeting process was manually intensive and the quarterly forecasting process took one week. The Carlyle group deployed the full Business Objects portfolio of solutions including data integration, the BI platform, and BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager, as well as BusinessObjects Planning, Forecasting, Payroll Planning, and Budgeting. As a result The Carlyle Group has established a planning process with department heads collaboratively building the budget, and reduced their forecast process from one week to just two days with BusinessObjects Forecasting. In addition, they now have better insight into fund performance by using Dashboard Manager to provide a consolidated view of data to fund managers, finance, and HR. The Carlyle Group also uses Payroll Planning in its HR department to better manage cost projections.

Business Process – The Securities and Exchange Commission

Prior to implementing Business Objects, the budget formulation and execution processes at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) were cumbersome and involved numerous spreadsheets that each required manual entry and maintenance. The SEC found it difficult to make adjustments, since a minor change cascaded throughout all of the budget materials. After implementing the Business Objects EPM solutions, the SEC now has the ability to maintain version control and transparency of change with confidence that they are posted automatically on all related exhibits. SEC now leverages a single application and consolidated data set to facilitate and produce various federally mandated reporting requirements in a timely and accurate fashion.

Business Objects is the world’s leading business intelligence (BI) software company, with more than 42,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into their business, and optimize performance. The company’s innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects™ XI, offers the BI industry’s most advanced and complete solution for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data visualization software. Business Objects has also built the industry’s strongest and most diverse partner community, and offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ; Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 – BOB), the world’s leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Armstrong Laing Limited, trading as “ALG Software,” a leading provider of profitability management and activity based costing solutions.

The acquisition will be an all-cash transaction of approximately £30 million GBP (approximately $56 million USD at current exchange rates) for all outstanding shares of ALG Software by Business Objects (U.K.) Limited, a Business Objects wholly owned U.K. subsidiary, and will be accounted for under the purchase method of accounting. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2006. Total revenue for ALG Software was approximately $19 million for its fiscal year ended January 31, 2006.

ALG Software is a global provider of enterprise performance management (EPM) software that is used for profitability management, activity based costing, predictive planning, and strategic business performance measurement. The company has more than 400 customers worldwide, including American Express, British Airways, British Telecom, Heineken, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, US Department of Labor, and WHSmith. ALG Software’s profitability management and activity based costing solutions represent a fast-growing segment of the EPM market and complement the existing Business Objects EPM solutions.

“Today’s announcement is terrific news for our customers – by adding ALG Software’s profitability management solutions to our EPM and BI offerings, we will provide our customers with a powerful arsenal for building high impact performance management solutions,” said John Schwarz, CEO of Business Objects. “The EPM market is in the midst of rapid change, and with this acquisition we will continue to play a leading role in shaping the market. This acquisition is another milestone in our long term corporate strategy around EPM.”

“The combination of Business Objects and ALG Software makes perfect sense, from both a company perspective and from the perspective of our customers,” said Mike Sheratt, founder and CEO of ALG Software. “ALG Software brings to Business Objects a strong solutions portfolio, as well as talented management, development, and sales teams with proven track records. We are excited about the future direction of enterprise performance management at Business Objects, and feel ALG can help play a key role in its success.”

About ALG Software
ALG Software is a global provider of performance management solutions to Global 5000 enterprises and leading government agencies. ALG provides a single solution for activity-based costing and performance measurement to link operational and financial perspectives. This gives organizations increased visibility into past, present and future performance together with an insight into causes and effects so they can constantly improve their future performance. Founded in 1990, ALG Software has its North American headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, with EMEA headquarters in Knutsford, UK, and additional offices and agents worldwide. More information is located at www.algsoftware.com.

Forward Looking Statements
This document contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning Business Objects’ products and services, ALG Software’s EPM solutions, the closing of the transaction and the timing thereof, the benefits to customers from the acquisition, Business Objects’ position in the EPM market, and impact of the transaction on Business Objects’ financial results. Actual events or results may differ materially from those described in this document due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others: the tax impact of the acquisition on Business Objects, the outcome of regulatory reviews of the transaction and the ability of the parties to complete the proposed transaction, Business Objects’ ability to retain ALG Software’s employees, and Business Objects’ ability to realize other financial benefits from the proposed acquisition. More information about potential factors that could affect Business Objects’ business and financial results is included in Business Objects’ Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2006 and Business Objects Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2005, which are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) and available at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. Business Objects is not obligated to and does not undertake any obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this document.

Zions operates more than 450 full-service banking offices and 500 ATMs in 10 western states, and has over $45 billion in assets. Zions owns eight separate banks in fast growth markets, allowing the community banks to operate independently. Using Business Objects budgeting, reporting, and strategic applications for Financial Institutions, Zions has streamlined the budgeting and forecasting process for both the company’s corporate office and its affiliate banks. Zions can now produce two semi annual strategic plans, as well as a bottom-up cost center budget, in less time that it used to take to do a single bottom-up budget. With Business Objects performance reporting, Zions can also quickly determine the profitability of its loans and see where and when there are pricing problems.

By radically shrinking its budgeting and reporting cycles, Zions has been able to develop long-term strategic financial plans for the first time — resulting in a significant return on investment for the company. For example, one strategic plan Zions formulated using Business Objects contributed to the justification and supporting regulatory and rating agency documentation for a large merger. This financial plan bolstered the confidence of various internal and external stakeholders, and enabled the company to minimize the cost of debt to finance the merger — saving the company nearly $30 million in funding costs over the next ten years.

“The ease of use and customization for the banking industry provided by the Business Objects EPM software made it the most attractive solution for our planning, budgeting, forecasting, and consolidations needs,” said H. Walter Young, senior vice president and manager of corporate finance at Zions Bancorporation. “By using Business Objects software, management throughout our organization is better informed. We have had a significant increase in forecasting capabilities and have shortened our budgeting cycle, allowing us to provide better information to the investment community in a timely fashion. We have had a large positive ROI from our investment.”

Standardizing on Business Objects for an Integrated BI and EPM Solution

To address their needs for a world-class business intelligence platform, Zions has recently standardized on BusinessObjects XI Release 2. The company is also deploying several additional EPM solutions, including BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager, BusinessObjects Performance Manager, and Crystal Xcelsius(TM). These solutions will enable Zions to expand its use of dashboards, scorecards, and other data visualization methodologies to improve performance. In addition, Zions has purchased BusinessObjects Incentive Compensation Management to streamline and automate the administration of its variable compensation program.

To help Zions tie together data from its disparate data sources, the company is deploying BusinessObjects Data Integrator. The metadata integration between Data Integrator and the Business Objects BI platform will allow Zions to see the impact of source changes and track data to its source.

“We believe that Zions Bancorporation recognizes the importance of having a comprehensive solution that delivers on a broad range of performance management initiatives,” said Tom Malone, group vice president and general manager, Planning and Budgeting at Business Objects. “The integration between our BI and enterprise performance management software provides Zions with an innovative solution to track performance, understand the key business drivers affecting the company, and manage their business more effectively. Zions is now able to turn their data into actionable information that serves as a tangible asset to the company.”

About Business Objects

Business Objects is the world’s leading business intelligence (BI) software company, with more than 39,000 customers worldwide, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 500. Business Objects helps organizations of all sizes create a trusted foundation for decision making, gain better insight into their business, and optimize performance. The company’s innovative business intelligence suite, BusinessObjects(TM) XI, offers the BI industry’s most advanced and complete solution for performance management, planning, reporting, query and analysis, and enterprise information management. BusinessObjects XI includes the award-winning Crystal line of reporting and data visualization software. Business Objects has also built the industry’s strongest and most diverse partner community, and offers consulting and education services to help customers effectively deploy their business intelligence projects.

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.