Expands Open Strategy to Quickly Deliver Business Intelligence Into Third-Party Enterprise Information Portal Products

New York, NY – October 24, 2001 – Information Builders, the leader in business intelligence for real-time information delivery over the Web, today announced the availability of WebFOCUS WebParts for integrating business intelligence capability directly into the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

This announcement extends WebFOCUS' ability to deliver real-time information to users of third-party portal products by adding reporting and business-analysis capabilities to their portal initiatives. Customers can now collaborate and share business intelligence among employees, partners, or customers through their Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server.

The Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server allows companies to easily find, share, and publish information in a single solution by combining the ability to easily create corporate Web portals with enterprise-content searching and document-management features.

"SharePoint Portal Server provides an effective way for individuals to locate information and share and collaborate within an enterprise," says Gary Goldberg, general manager of WebFOCUS Applications Division at Information Builders. "This ability is central to our partnership and illustrates WebFOCUS' core strategy – to deliver real-time reports and business analysis capability to those who need to make informed, and timely business decisions."

"We're very pleased to see Information Builders is committed to SharePoint Portal Server as a portal platform," says Gytis Barzdukas, group product manager for the Portal Business Group at Microsoft. "With WebFOCUS, customers can quickly add reporting capability to retrieve, analyze, and report against their business systems – effectively increasing the value of their SharePoint Portal Server deployment.

About Information Builders

Information Builders provides its customers with robust business intelligence solutions, specializing in real-time information delivery over the Web. Headquartered in New York, Information Builders helps companies and government organizations improve their mission-critical operations by transforming data into usable information and delivering it to employees, managers, partners, and customers through the Internet. With its award-winning WebFOCUS solution, Information Builders delivers information to more than 11,000 global customer sites, including most of the Fortune 100 and all U.S. federal government agencies. The company employs 2,000 professionals worldwide and generated revenues exceeding $300 million in 2000.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software – any time, any place and on any device.