Information Builders Continues Solid Growth in Business Intelligence and Integration Business in 2007

NEW YORK, NY--(Marketwire - February 5, 2008) - Information Builders, the leader in production business intelligence (BI) solutions, today announced accomplishments in 2007 that were characterized by positive growth from its industry-leading innovations. In particular, new license revenue was up 16.6 percent showing no hesitation from customers who are fully aware of the consolidation in the BI industry. The construction of significant information systems for Information Builders customers resulted in an increase in Professional Services revenue by more than 14 percent. Information Builders continued to introduce innovative BI solutions including Magnify for enterprise search and Mobile Favorites for reporting on the go. The company also extended strategic partnerships with IBM, among others, and received industry recognition for its products and customer successes.

Customer Wins and Successes

As BI has become a centralized business application, many organizations have chosen WebFOCUS for its unique ability to run on multiple platforms while meeting the increased demand for large-scale user deployments. 2007 yielded strong customer adoption of Information Builders solutions in the government sector and among mid-market organizations, as well as in the energy and consumer-packaged goods industries. Key wins include Brightpoint, C. H. Robinson, Dealer Services, Everest Reinsurance, Georgia Pacific, ING, Nvision, and University of Ottawa among others.

Public sector organizations across North America including California State Compensation Insurance Fund, City of Houston, Commonwealth of Kentucky, Defense Intelligence Agency, Drug Enforcement Agency, Indiana PERF, Volusia County, Omaha Public Schools, and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management have been successful with Information Builders.

Product Innovation

Information Builders continued to improve access to information for mobile devices in 2007 with the release of WebFOCUS Mobile Favorites™, a mobile business intelligence solution that allows users to access critical business data from any mobile device and manage it through a standard BI dashboard.

Building upon the increasing demand for enterprise search, Information Builders also introduced WebFOCUS Magnify, the industry's first search navigation tool that dynamically categorizes search results and supplements them with analysis and reporting capabilities. Magnify dramatically improves the user experience, enhances the relevancy of results, and reduces the time spent searching for information.

Information Builders also updated its operational performance management solution, WebFOCUS Performance Management Framework, with communications, collaboration, analysis, and strategy tools to provide complete visibility into business results and actively achieve better performance.

Information Builders has also continued to deliver on its commitment to drive process-driven BI this year through the release of WebFOCUS 7.6.1, which includes process-driven alerts to help companies increase process agility and efficiency, reduce errors, and proactively anticipate and respond to critical events. The release also featured improved Microsoft Office integration with new Excel plug-ins, so Excel spreadsheets can be refreshed with data from corporate data assets each time the file is opened.

Strategic Partnerships

In 2007, Information Builders continued to demonstrate its commitment to leveraging partnerships to expand market share in the rapidly growing business intelligence and enterprise integration sectors. The company strengthened key partnerships and increased revenue generated through partners, including IBM, SPSS, BEA, SAP, Lombardi Software, and ESRI. Each of these agreements enhances the value of Information Builders offerings to customers and dramatically expands the company's addressable market and business opportunities.

Global Momentum

In addition to numerous global customer wins such as Council of Europe, BT, Bayer, Akzo Nobel, and Coty, Information Builders expanded its EMEA Partner Program. Now, international customers can more easily enable partners to deploy WebFOCUS and iWay Software solutions to overcome business intelligence and integration barriers.

Industry Accolades

Information Builders and its customers also garnered an unprecedented number of industry accolades last year. Most recently, Pershing LLC was named the winner of the 2007 "Best Practices in IT" award from the Technology Managers Forum by a panel of Fortune 500 IT managers. The City of Richmond, Virginia Police Department won the prestigious 2007 Gartner Business Intelligence Excellence Award and TDWI's Business Intelligence Best Practice Award for its innovative use of WebFOCUS for predictive analytics to reduce crime. Additionally, the Computerworld Honors Program recognized seven of Information Builders' customers for extending the benefits of technology to society.

Gartner recognized Information Builders in its Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms(1) report. The leading performance management research firm, Ventana Research, named Information Builders a leader in enabling performance management based on WebFOCUS' ability to empower executives with the understanding required to make strategic business decisions.

iWay Software

iWay Software was positioned in the visionaries' quadrant in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects(2) and Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools(3) issued this year.

Coty, one of the world's largest and most successful fragrance companies, leveraged iWay Software to quickly integrate the IT infrastructure of acquisition Unilever Cosmetics International to realize millions of dollars in benefits and gleaned a 415 percent return on investment (ROI). Based on this remarkable success, Coty's David Berry was recognized by CIO Magazine in the CIO 100 this year.

"The business intelligence vendor landscape has changed dramatically over the past year, but customers are still focused on getting real-time, well-integrated information into the hands of more and more people," said Gerald Cohen, CEO of Information Builders. "Information Builders is well positioned not only to operate with any and all platforms, but also to deliver the most cutting-edge, accessible, user-friendly information available in the market."

About iWay Software

iWay Software's integration methodology is simple: We use a single, integrated set of graphical design tools to assemble powerful pre-built components for enterprise-class B2B, A2A, or B2B2A integration scenarios -- without the use of custom code. Integration configurations are deployed to run-time execution engines that can be deployed in a standalone manner to any environment supporting a JVM -- including Web Application Servers from any vendor. We deliver the fastest, most cost-effective, and simplest way to integrate and streamline critical business processes. iWay Software's vendor, platform, and protocol-neutral integration solutions achieve the promise of SOA: true reusability.

About Information Builders

Information Builders award-winning combination of business intelligence and enterprise integration software has been providing innovative solutions to more than 12,000 customers for the past 30 years. WebFOCUS is the world's most widely utilized business intelligence platform. It provides the security, scalability, and flexibility needed at every level of global extended enterprises. Its simplicity helps create executive, analytical, and operational applications that reach dozens to millions of users. Information Builders iWay Software suite provides state-of-the-art, multi-purpose, pre-built integration components that address all SOA, application, data, and information management requirements. Its integration adapters have been adopted by the leading software platform providers. Together, these products give Information Builders customers the ability to live up to the company motto: "Your Business. No Barriers."

Information Builders award-winning technology has successfully provided quality software and superior services to more than 12,000 customers, including most of the Fortune 100 and U.S. federal government agencies. Headquartered in New York City with 90 offices worldwide, the company employs 1,450 people and has more than 350 business partners. For more information visit http://www.informationbuilders.com.

Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2007 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the 'Leaders' quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

(1) "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms, 1Q07." Kurt Schlegel, Bill Hostmann, Andreas Bitterer. January 26, 2007.

(2) "Magic Quadrant for Application Infrastructure for Back-End Application Integration Projects, 2Q07." Jess Thompson, Michael Barnes, Kimihiko Iijima, Benoit J. Lheureux, Paolo Malinverno, Yefim V. Natis, Massimo Pezzini, Roy W. Schulte, Simon Hayward. June 7, 2007.

(3) "Magic Quadrant for Data Integration Tools, 2007." Ted Friedman, Mark A. Beyer, Andreas Bitterer. October 5, 2007.

Contact Information: Press Contacts: Kathleen Moran Information Builders (212) 736-4433 Stephanie Fallon Emerge PR (617) 729-3176