Business Objects today announced the availability of Xcelsius Engage 2008, a data presentation and dashboard tool that helps business professionals quickly and easily transform complex business data into dynamic, actionable information. Xcelsius Engage can be used by anyone familiar with a spreadsheet and can transform the way data is presented, viewed and used every day.

With a refined and intuitive user interface, Xcelsius Engage allows customers to point and click their way to departmental and operational dashboards that deliver real-time visibility into business performance in simple, easy-to-understand visual models. The solution also allows users to mash up data from multiple Web services or internal business applications without coding. Xcelsius Engage uses Microsoft Excel as its data modeling foundation, which enables a previously unimaginable range of users--both technical and non-technical--to create interactive data visualizations and dashboards.

"Xcelsius Engage is the tool to use if you want to impress your colleagues, partners and customers," said James Thomas, vice president of business intelligence content and tools at Business Objects. "In many corporate environments, business professionals find themselves delaying actions and decisions because they lack the information they need to move forward. Armed with Xcelsius Engage, these professionals can become heroes in their organizations by providing live data that is easy to act on with clear direction and confidence."

The interactive presentations and dashboards can be used in any business setting--from the boardroom in Microsoft PowerPoint, to internal and external Web applications or in broadly distributed content within Adobe PDF. Xcelsius Engage gives organizations the power to change meetings from one-way presentations to real dialogues by allowing all participants to get immediate feedback on relationships and impacts of decisions. Xcelsius turns static data presentations into powerful competitive weapons.

With Xcelsius Engage companies can create sales, marketing, finance or other types of departmental dashboards to drive informed decision making and optimize their business performance. New innovative features include:

-- Tab Set Container - a pre-built component that allows for creation of easy-to-navigate multi-tab dashboards without writing any code

-- Trend Analyzer - a built-in function that simplifies the task of discovering trends and patterns in data by automatically inserting statistical calculations into the Xcelsius visualization at load time

-- Interactive Maps - a comprehensive library of country maps for various geographical areas of the world.

"Xcelsius has already revolutionized data visualization and dashboarding and Xcelsius Engage 2008 brings a whole new level of exciting possibilities," said Paul Grill, president and CEO of InfoSol. "The improvements to the workflow, the use of external components, the ability to embed dashboards in Crystal Reports 2008 and, most of all, the new connectivity options open up new frontiers for Xcelsius Engage that will bring dashboards to everyone.

Xcelsius 2008 Engage enhanced integration with Crystal Reports 2008 empowers report authors to deliver interactive reports with the power of what-if analyses much more quickly. Additionally, Xcelsius' out-of-the box connectivity to Adobe LiveCycle Data Services provides up-to-second views of transactional data in easy-to-understand dashboards. A new Software Development Kit (SDK) enables customers to create customizable, dynamic visualizations that are tailored to their specific needs. Customers can leverage Adobe Flex to build additional components for Xcelsius and pioneer the path of interactive data visualization.

Xcelsius Engage 2008 and Xcelsius Engage Server 2008 are generally available today from Business Objects and its broad set of partners and software resellers. Enterprise-class editions are also available for BusinessObjects XI 3.0.