Business Objects to Acquire Acta Technology, Inc.

Acquisition of Leading Data Integration Vendor Provides Business Objects With a Comprehensive, Best-of-breed Enterprise Analytic Platform

San Jose, Calif. - July 9, 2002 -- Business Objects, the world’s leading provider of business intelligence solutions, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Acta Technology, Inc. of Mountain View, California, a leading data integration vendor.

The acquisition will provide Business Objects with a comprehensive enterprise analytic platform (EAP) for the delivery of custom-developed and pre-packaged analytic applications. Business Objects will have a best-of-breed enterprise analytic platform, where both the business intelligence and data integration components are comprised of industry leading technology.

The acquisition is a cash transaction of approximately US $65.0 million for all shares of Acta Technology, and will be accounted for under the purchase method of accounting. Business Objects expects the acquisition to be completed during the third quarter of 2002. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company and is subject to regulatory approval and customary closing conditions. Business Objects expects the acquisition to be accretive to earnings beginning in 2003.

“I am very pleased to announce the agreement to acquire Acta Technology. With the integration of our two product sets, Business Objects will be able to offer our customers a total solution for business intelligence, from data extraction to analytic application delivery, and everything in between,” said Bernard Liautaud, chief executive officer of Business Objects. “Until now, we have relied on partners to complete our solutions. While we will continue to work with all the data integration tools on the market, with the acquisition of Acta we will be able to pre-integrate our applications and tools with Acta’s leading data integration technology in order to deliver faster deployments, faster payback, and faster return on investment for our customers.”

Liautaud continued: “We are very excited to have chosen Acta. They are the most visionary company in the data integration market, in particular the way they pioneered real-time business intelligence. In addition, Acta offers a collection of application data marts that accelerate customer deployments of BI against enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications, such as SAP R/3™ and PeopleSoft. Packaged data marts are one of the fastest growing segments of the BI business, according to leading industry research firm IDC. We intend to market these packaged data marts (formerly known as eCaches) and to integrate them with our family of packaged analytic applications, BusinessObjects Analytics. Once we have done so, we will be able to offer our customers enterprise-scope, packaged analytic applications, complete with integration to the most popular ERP applications data sources.”

“Ultimately, this acquisition is about providing our customers with complete BI solutions that integrate data across the scores of packaged and custom-developed applications that they use today. In so doing, we will be able to enable our customers to get powerful insights from their corporate information and improve business performance,” Liautaud concluded.

Acta was founded in 1996 and has more than 230 customers worldwide, including Alcatel, Chevron, Guinness Limited, Hunter-Douglas, Maxtor, Nortel Networks, Shell, and Unilever. Key members of the Acta engineering, sales, service, and marketing teams are expected to join Business Objects, including co-founder and chief technology officer, Sachin Chawla; and vice president of engineering, Chuck Altomare.

The New Business Objects Offering
Recognized by Red Herring magazine in July 2002 as one of the 50 most innovative private companies, Acta provides the industry’s first and only batch and real-time data integration platform for the extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) segment. Businesses now recognize ETL as a critical building block to a successful business intelligence deployment, and have increasingly turned to Acta as the need for real-time data analysis continues to rise. By combining Acta’s advanced ETL technology with the industry’s leading business intelligence solutions from Business Objects, businesses will benefit from a single, powerful, and integrated end-to-end BI solution.

“We are pleased that this transaction will enable us to join the Business Objects team, and are excited by the prospect of providing the industry’s most complete business intelligence solution,” said Sachin Chawla, co-founder and chief technology officer, Acta Technology. “We share a common vision to help customers turn data into a strategic asset, and look forward to working with the industry leader to make our innovative technology available to a wider audience.”

With this acquisition, Business Objects will integrate Acta products and technology into current and future Business Objects business intelligence products. Business Objects expects to release its first products based on Acta Technology in Q3 2002, following the closing of the acquisition.

Customers and partners of Business Objects and Acta can send questions to:
acta-info@businessobjects.com, or call 408-943-6777.


This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements, regarding in particular the successful integration of Acta’s and Business Objects’ product lines; the ability to offer broader business intelligence and analytic application solutions; plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; statements regarding future performance; statements about new products; statements regarding the growth of the market for packaged data marts; key members of Acta’s management remaining with Business Objects; the effect of the acquisition on Business Objects’ future earnings; the timing of closing; and the ability to compete in the business intelligence and analytic applications markets. These forward-looking statements are based on Business Objects’ current expectations, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. The factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include, but are not limited to, the closing of the Acta acquisition, the successful integration of the two companies’ product lines, the successful integration of the two companies’ personnel and culture; the ability to retain key members of Acta’s management with Business Objects, the level of demand for BusinessObjects’ business intelligence solutions, changes in customer order patterns, the importance of business intelligence in the intranet, extranet, and analytic applications markets, unexpected expenses, the continued success in technological advances and the ability of Business Objects to adapt to technological changes, the ability of Business Objects to gain acceptance of its products, the company’s reliance on partners and other third party distribution channels to market and distribute its products, the impact of events outside the United States such as fluctuating currency rates, in particular fluctuations of the euro and yen, worldwide economic and political conditions, the ability of Business Objects to protect its intellectual property, litigation involving intellectual property and other issues, and increased competition. For a more complete discussion of these factors and additional risk factors that could materially affect Business Object’s current and future operating results, see the discussions in Business Objects’ Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2002 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Business Objects undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements at any time or for any reason.