Business intelligence (BI) giant Business Objects yesterday urged its European customers to move to its flagship BusinessObjects XI reporting suite, and said recent advances would make the transition easier.

Chief executive John Schwarz estimated that "substantially less than 10 percent" of the vendor's 37,000 customers have already moved to the new toolset.

BusinessObjects XI was launched in January last year with functionality from both Business Objects’ BI suite and the Crystal Reports reporting tool acquired through its late-2003 purchase of BI specialist Crystal Decisions. The company said the new suite was easier to use and offered the scalability required by firms to roll out reporting tools across the enterprise.

But vice-president of product marketing Donald McCormick, speaking to the press at Business Objects user conference in Cannes, admitted that basing the suite on Crystal Decisions' architecture had made it tricky for some Business Objects customers to upgrade.

John Schwarz said this complexity helped to explain why some firms have been slow to upgrade. He said15 percent of Crystal customers had made the move in the past 15 months, and a small percentage of Business Objects' customers had made the transition.

However, the company said the launch of BusinessObjects XI Release 2 last November had made technical migration simpler for Business Objects customers. The vendor added that it had invested heavily in services teams to help customers migrate quickly and easily.

Schwarz insisted this message is now reaching customers, and in a recent survey of 1,000 customers, 70 percent said they wanted to move to BusinessObjects XI in the next 18 to 24 months.