Backdrop: On October 7, 2007, SAP announced its intention to purchase Business Objects, the global market leader in business intelligence (BI). This friendly takeover comes at the right time for SAP and Business Objects - and especially for companies aiming to optimize their business performance. Because of the friendly nature of our union, we have been working collaboratively to ready ourselves to deliver on the early commitments we made to our customers.

What are these commitments?

• Bring Business Objects into the SAP Group as an independent business unit focused on performance optimization and business intelligence.
• Offer customers the flexibility to choose the underlying applications, technology platform, and partner ecosystem that's right for their business. This has been a design principle of this union.
• Respect customer investments while we work in concert to deliver a consolidated and unified portfolio of solutions.
• Deliver a broad application portfolio to enable business performance optimization - starting with enterprise performance management and governance, risk, and compliance.
• Deliver a next-generation business intelligence platform, starting with information discovery and delivery and enterprise information management.
• Make available to our joint partner ecosystems the advantages of our applications, technology and worldwide resources to enhance customers' investments in SAP and Business Objects.

Our commitments stand true as we work together to offer customers the greater value arising from the combination of our two great companies. We believe that, together, SAP and Business Objects offer the strongest products on the market today and the clearest vision to transform the way the world works by connecting people, information, and businesses.

Today, SAP and Business Objects offer market-leading solutions to unlock information, enable insight, manage performance, and govern compliance, regardless of the underlying business applications and data stores.

Our vision is to expand today's portfolio into a next-generation business intelligence platform that supports performance optimization applications developed by SAP, our partners, and customers. First, we will enable our customers to generate insight form both structured and unstructured information, from both inside and outside the enterprise. Second, we will enable teams to collaborate in the context of their business through user-focused offerings that support how people really work. Third, we will enable the flow of information and execution of optimized decisions throughout the business network. For customers, this newfound ability to optimize their business performance will result in broader insight, aligned strategy, optimized decisions, and flawless execution.

Customers who also choose to leverage a business process platform from SAP can gain an additional benefit: closed-loop business performance optimization. They can execute decisions efficiently and effectively through industry-specific business processes. They can more easily implement process changes required for optimization by combining process components on the platform. They can monitor execution and respond to business events in real time across the business network.

For more information regarding SAP's purchase of Business Objects:
www.businessobjects.com/SAPacquisition

Answers to Most Frequently Asked Questions

Strategy and Integration

Business Objects is SAP's largest purchase to date. Does this signal a change in SAP's acquisition strategy?
SAP's strategy is to complement its existing applications and solutions with smart purchases that bring innovative technologies and capabilities while maintaining its successful organic growth track record. Our strategy is guided by careful market assessments and our focus on adding value to our customers' investments in SAP. The purchase of Business Objects is in keeping with this strategy. While larger than our past acquisitions, it is a smart purchase that can offer immediate benefits to customers and enables our organic growth track record.

Why did SAP decide to purchase Business Objects?
By acquiring Business Objects, SAP seizes a significant opportunity and market-leading innovation with the right partner, at the right time, and in the right market: the market segment in support of business users. SAP has identified this market as the third component of its growth strategy, having successfully introduced two key growth drivers: the industry-first business process platform and a new midmarket volume business. 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.

What is the added value of the combined companies?
When we combine the strength of SAP in business processes with Business Objects' strength in business intelligence, we believe we can deliver the strongest and most comprehensive performance optimization applications to help customers link business strategies with the execution necessary to fulfill them.

How will you integrate Business Objects into SAP?
This acquisition brings together two companies with similar corporate cultures, complementary offerings, and similar views on the changing market and ways to deliver the next-generation of business performance optimization. SAP will operate Business Objects as an independent business unit within the SAP Group. This will allows us to follow through on commitments to Business Objects customers and deliver increased value for our combined customers.

Will you continue to run Business Objects as a separate business unit, or will you gradually integrate the business and products into the SAP portfolio?
Business Objects will operate as a business unit within the SAP Group and will continue to offer open, broad, and integrated solutions independently for business users. Business Objects will continue to offer a portfolio that enables business insight, performance management, and compliance and that is agnostic to the underlying business applications and data stores.

Customers

What will the combined SAP and Business Objects offer customers?
SAP and Business Objects will help customers directly connect their business strategies to their execution - and back again. In short, we offer customers the ability to translate business insight into immediate action. When business insight can be translated into action, companies can adjust and optimize their processes in real time, tightly closing the loop between strategy and execution.

Will SAP continue to support Business Objects customers?
Yes, our overriding commitment during this acquisition is to protect customer investments and enhance the value they can derive from business intelligence solutions. Current Business Objects customers can rest assured that Business Objects will continue to deliver the most comprehensive set of BI and analytics solutions in the market. We will continue to develop Business Objects solutions, which are open and interoperate with customers' existing application landscapes.

What will happen if a solution is eventually discontinued? Does that mean SAP will discontinue support for that product?
We will protect customer investments by following agreed-upon maintenance rules, offering migration kits and helping ensure functional parity for solutions. We will consider all of our customers' needs in developing our product strategy - including those customers using non-preferred solutions. We will continue to focus on product innovation, offering attractive replacement options for non-preferred solutions. R@D will support migration, integration, and maintenance activities, where appropriate.

Will SAP continue to support customers that use Business Objects products in non-SAP environments?
Yes, SAP is committed to supporting our customers' heterogeneous environments. We value Business Objects particularly for being platform-agnostic. Both SAP and Business Objects have a long tradition of supporting our customers' right to develop the IT infrastructure that is right for their business. We will continue this tradition.

Does the change in ownership impact how we contact Business Objects for customer support?
Please continue to call Business Objects for your customer support requirements. For more information, please go to businessobjects.com/support.

Will we keep our Business Objects account executive? Business Objects' products will continue to be sold by the existing Business Objects' sales force. Select products, available in the form of targeted market offerings, will be available through the SAP sales force. There will be a co-sell model designed to offer customers the expertise they require from both companies, in a unified manner. We will provide you with more details in the coming months.

Product and Strategy

What is the product road map for integration? Generally speaking, SAP and Business Objects will look to streamline and consolidate our product road map. We will evaluate any areas of overlap and decide upon the preferred solution. Once we have consolidated and rationalized all product road maps, we will deliver an integration timeline to customers.

Will Business Objects' solutions continue to run on the Business Objects platform?
Yes. We will not only support but also continue to expand our investments in the Business Objects XI platform. Business Objects XI and Business Objects solutions have always been designed to be open and provide strong integration with industry-standard middleware, applications, and databases. Business Objects' certified integration points work seamlessly with SAP NetWeaver - meaning that customers always have the ability to combine Business Objects with the SAP NetWeaver technology platform and leverage the best of both of these worlds.

How will customers' investments in SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence be protected by SAP?
SAP will continue to add new features and capabilities to SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence. In addition, now customers will be able to take advantage of increased synergies between SAP and Business Objects solutions, as the companies deepen their existing interoperability.

What will you do with the redundant products?
Fortunately, in many areas, product overlap is not a large issue. Our solutions are quite complementary. In areas where there is overlap, our intent is to review areas of overlap and select one application in each area to build on as the preferred solution, while placing overlapping products in maintenance mode. These solutions will have clearly articulated maintenance rules and migration kits to preferred solutions, and we will provide blueprints to make sure there is functional parity for the solutions.

Will SAP eliminate any Business Objects products? How will decisions be made about which products SAP and/or Business Objects will eliminate?
In defining the road map, where there are areas of overlap, we will choose preferred solutions in which we will invest and build upon. Non-preferred solutions will be put into a maintenance mode with clearly articulated maintenance rules, availability of migration kits and declarations of functional parity for most of the solutions. Our overriding commitment throughout this process will be to protect customer investments.

What is the future of Crystal Reports? Will SAP continue supporting and developing Crystal Reports?
Yes, SAP and Business Objects will continue to support and develop Crystal Reports. Crystal Reports is a key part of the overall value of BI for SAP. Innovation and further development will continue for the world's most widely deployed reporting solution.

We have heard that SAP and Business Objects have already launched some joint offerings in the form of product packages. What are product packages?
Product packages are the initial nine joint offerings that will become available in January 2008 and that will be sold by both organizations' global sales teams.

Why product packages?
We wanted to offer customers the first opportunity to license, install, and manage solutions from SAP and Business Objects in a single IT investment transaction. These packages and offerings were chosen to address the most common challenges facing the executive suite today.

Packages for large enterprises:

• Financial Performance Management
• Governance, Risk, and Compliance
• Visualization and Reporting
• Enterprise Query, Reporting, and Analysis
• Master Data Services
• Data Integration and Data Quality Management

Complementary offerings for small and midsize companies:

• BusinessObjects Edge Series
• SAP Business All-in-One with BusinessObjects Edge Standard
• Crystal Reports Server

Details on each of the packages and offerings, as well as their value proposition, will be available on the SAP and Business Objects Web site.

What is the value to the customer of offering joint product packages?
There are specific value propositions for each offering. In general, the packages simplify the buying process and make it easier for customers to purchase a given set of functionality from SAP and Business Objects that meets a specific business requirement they have. In the case of SAP, customers will receive migration kits that help them get even greater value from their SAP information.

What is the value to the customer of the combined technologies?
We see 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.

Partner Ecosystem

How does the Business Objects acquisition impact SAP's ecosystem strategy?
Fostering a customer-focused ecosystem is and will continue to be an important part of SAP's corporate strategy. This new union with Business Objects opens new opportunities to further expand/enhance the ecosystem and options available to customers and partners - through continued investment in cultivating relevant, trusted partner solutions, and communities of innovation (SAP Developer Network, Business Process Expert community, Enterprise Services Community, industry value networks, industry standards) as well as embracing the partners and resellers of Business Objects.

What will happen to the partner programs? Will they remain separate? By the end of 2008, we plan to harmonize all partner programs around one common program framework to simplify partner interaction and provide increased visibility into the expanded opportunities for partners. This underlying framework, the SAP PartnerEdge program, will provide a comprehensive and harmonized set of resources (partner enablement, capability building, marketing enablement, sales enablement, references) to help partners achieve success while addressing the unique needs of the Business Objects partner community.

That said, both SAP and Business Objects have various partner programs, such as the solution reseller program from SAP and the Business Objects program for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), which will continue as separate programs but will take advantage of the integration points and unified services available under SAP PartnerEdge. Further details will be made available over the coming months.

In the short term, existing Business Objects partners who are interested in reselling SAP solutions should discuss eligibility requirements with their channel manager.

Miscellaneous

Will there be layoffs as a result of this acquisition? Both SAP and Business Objects understand that people are the main asset in this acquisition. Because of the size of the SAP organization, we anticipate being able to offer new opportunities to people in most impacted positions.

Will you consolidate any of your office locations?
The immediate plan is to retain the key Business Objects offices in Paris, France and in Vancouver, Canada. We will consider integrating other Business Objects offices into the existing SAP Labs structure. Any potential relocation would happen over the course of the first 12+ months.

What will happen to the Business Objects user conference?
Insight, Business Objects' annual user conference, will continue as a conference within a conference at SAPPHIRE, SAP's annual user conference. We want all of our customers to benefit from the combined entity and value proposition that Business Objects will offer as part of the SAP Group. We have a tremendous respect for people's time and travel budgets, and therefore we'd like to be able to provide them with everything they're looking for - under a single roof.

Will training for Business Objects products continue? Will education services be discontinued?
Yes, training on Business Objects products will continue to be offered based on customer, partner, and overall demand. The training offered will be aligned with the near-term product implementations as well as the long-term product road map. Education services will continue. We will continue to deliver education material and training.