Business Objects nets 14,000-seat Australia Post deal

I am often asked which companies are using Business Objects product suite.

In Australia Australia Post is planning to boost its business intelligence capabilities. It has signed a 14,000-seat software licence with Business Objects. The three-year installation and support deal is the largest local win for Business Objects, which originated in France and is now listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Australia Post is embarking on a performance management initiative, and will use our software to help it do all reporting and analysis

Business Objects Asia-Pacific general manager Keith Budge said. “It’s a pretty significant project, certainly a world leader for the postal industry."

In an interview with Australian IT ... Australia Post chief information officer Wayne Saunders said the organisation was focused on shaping its enterprise architecture for the future.

"We saw an opportunity to make business intelligence tools a strategic platform," he said.

"With the BI infrastructure, we can develop an architecture that supports the business."


Business Objects reports ... 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™ 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 and Microsoft To Make War in the Midmarket

Another question asked regularly is what Business Intelligence products are suited for mid sized companies often referred to as SMEs.

Doug Henschen of intelligent enterprise

Seeing a huge market opportunity to sell business intelligence software to companies with 100 to 1,000 employees and $100 million to $1 billion in revenue, Business Objects today announced a major new-product family and larger initiative aimed at catering to midsized companies. The midmarket now buys $2.1 billion worth of BI software each year, according to IDC, and Business Objects says that figure is growing 12.5 percent per year — 50 percent faster than BI sales growth among large enterprises.

To cater to the tighter budgets and leaner IT staffs of midsized companies, Business Objects is introducing Crystal Decisions, a “holistic” product that will be offered in Standard, Professional and Premium editions. The Standard edition, which includes reporting, query and analysis, is being released today starting at $20,000. The Pro and Premium editions, which will add data integration and performance management capabilities, will debut in the second and fourth quarter, respectively. All three editions will be able to deliver data, reports and analyses within Microsoft Office and SharePoint.

Microsoft includes integration technologies with SQL Server, something only available in the Pro and Premium editions of Crystal Decisions, but Rowe says Crystal Decisions will deliver more extensive data quality, data cleansing and ETL capabilities. Microsoft's PerformancePoint Server, based in part on ProClarity products Microsoft acquired last year, debuted in mid 2007. Crystal Decisions Premium, which will include goal, metric, scorecard, trend and collaboration features, won't debut until the fourth quarter.

Update: Microsoft launched its Performance Point recently with a well organised Business Intelligence Summit. This day long event was well worth attending !