BOBJ: Business Objects Delivers Crystal Reports for Eclipse

Business Objects (Nasdaq: BOBJ; Euronext Paris ISIN code: FR0004026250 - BOB), the world's leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced the availability of Crystal Reports® for Eclipse. This new version of Crystal Reports provides a 100 percent Java-based report design and deployment environment for application developers. Now developers building applications in the Eclipse development environment can simply embed Crystal Reports into those applications. By making Crystal Reports available to the Eclipse community, Business Objects makes it easier for companies to create rich reporting solutions that help monitor and improve their business performance. With this announcement, Business Objects extends its leadership in providing reporting and business intelligence solutions for the open source environment.

"As a Java developer using Eclipse, I am thrilled that Crystal Reports can now be a part of my everyday development environment," said Jessica King, programmer at Manufacturing Performance Services. "The Crystal Reports products allow me to quickly and efficiently deliver the reports that my users want, but with a higher quality than they expect. That fact keeps Crystal Reports in my toolkit as my definitive reporting solution. Also, I genuinely appreciate the effort Business Objects spends to gather opinions from customers, especially knowing the company will take them into consideration."

Developers Embrace Crystal Reports for Eclipse

Eclipse has quickly become one of the most popular IDEs amongst Java developers. By delivering Crystal Reports for Eclipse, Business Objects provides a proven reporting solution compared to more rudimentary open source tools. Since making the beta version of Crystal Reports for Eclipse available in January of 2006, there have been over 50,000 downloads of the preview software from over 120 countries.

Crystal Reports for Eclipse Continues Tradition as the Gold Standard in Embedded Reporting

Crystal Reports has been the de facto standard for embedded reporting for over a decade. Starting with Microsoft Visual Basic over 14 years ago, Crystal Reports has provided embedded reporting directly within a wide range of IDEs. Today, Crystal Reports is integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, IBM Rational Application Developer, BEA Workshop, and Borland JBuilder. Crystal Reports for the Eclipse IDE expands Business Objects’ offerings for the open source community and gives Eclipse users a powerful, flexible reporting solution.

According to a recent IDC report, open source software is not just about Linux anymore. Open source software is being used by 71% of the developers in the world and is in production at 54% of their organizations.1 Business Objects already provides extensive support of open source software infrastructure including support for the Linux platform, Apache Tomcat application server, and the MySQL database. Organizations and application developers are choosing Java and open source infrastructure to more easily create and integrate their applications.

"We are extremely pleased to welcome Crystal Reports for Eclipse to the growing number of commercial solutions built on the extensible Eclipse development and application framework," said Mike Milinkovich, executive director at the Eclipse Foundation. "Business Objects has provided significant support for Eclipse since becoming a member of the organization earlier this year and this release shows their continued commitment to the Eclipse community."

"Year after year, developers continue to embrace Crystal Reports as their reporting solution of choice," said Tim Lang, vice president of developer programs at Business Objects. "Developers have spoken and Eclipse is quickly becoming their IDE of choice, especially for Java developers. That's why we are excited to bring the power of Crystal Reports to the Eclipse community. Business Objects has a proud tradition of offering developers the flexibility to easily embed reporting in any application - whether it's based on Java, .NET, or Linux."

Company Launches Developer Community Website

Today Business Objects also announces Diamond, an online developer community website that offers a meeting place for developers, report designers, and other IT professionals creating Business Objects solutions. Diamond allows Business Objects customers, partners, and employees to share news, experiences, and solutions for the benefit of the entire community. The Diamond website also includes the latest news on Crystal Reports for Eclipse. Diamond is located at http://diamond.businessobjects.com.

Availability and Pricing

Crystal Reports for Eclipse is generally available now. For more information and to download the basic edition of Crystal Reports for Eclipse, please go to the Diamond website.

The basic edition of Crystal Reports for Eclipse is complimentary for the corporate developer building applications for their organizations and allows developers to design and deploy reports on a single server. The professional version of Crystal Reports for Eclipse Professional, designed for multi-server deployments, is $495 US per server.