Business Objects To Complete Crystal Decisions Buyout Dec. 11Business Objects To Complete Crystal Decisions Buyout Dec. 11

Business Objects SA expects to complete its $820 million acquisition of enterprise reporting software vendor Crystal Decisions Inc. on Dec. 11, when Business Objects shareholders vote on the buyout, CEO Bernard Liautaud says. The deal has already cleared regulatory hurdles in the United States and Europe, Liautaud said in his keynote speech at Business Objects' user conference in Phoenix this week.

The combined companies, which will have annual sales of about $800 million, will provide a road map for integrating their business-intelligence software offerings in January, Liautaud told the more than 1,500 Business Objects customers at the conference. "We want to be a billion-dollar organization before 2005," he said.

Liautaud, who co-founded the company in 1990, said business-intelligence tools are becoming as critical to running a company as relational-database software was in the 1980s and enterprise-resource-planning applications were in the 1990s.

"It's clear that business intelligence is at the peak of its visibility right now," he said, noting that business-intelligence software is being more widely adopted to improve business performance. Business intelligence is critical for making better business decisions, improving visibility into business operations, enhancing customer loyalty, optimizing supply chains, and identifying operational efficiencies, he said.

Business-intelligence systems will become pervasive throughout many companies, with every employee using some kind of business-intelligence tool, in contrast to the current 5% to 10% rate of usage within companies, Liautaud predicted. Citing figures from research firm IDC, he said the median payback for business-intelligence IT is a relatively quick 1.03 years--with nearly 30% earning a complete payback within six months--and a mean return-on-investment of 431%.

Liautaud also predicted that consolidation among business-intelligence software vendors would continue. Companies want to buy more IT products from fewer vendors, he said, and the surviving vendors will offer broad portfolios of products, helping customers lower procurement, training, integration, and administrative costs.