Press Release
October 1, 2001
O'Reilly and Pearson Launch Joint Venture
Boston, MA--O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. and the Pearson Technology Group
(PTG), a division of Pearson plc, (NYSE: PSO) today announced a joint venture
to launch a new online information retrieval service for the enterprise IT
market. The venture's flagship service, Safari Tech Books Online,
is a comprehensive information retrieval service where enterprise IT
departments can access trusted content to pinpoint answers to time-critical
issues.
"Developers and system administrators constantly turn to the Web and IT
books for information during their work day. We designed Safari Tech Books
Online as a tool to help them get quick online access to a deep pool of
technical information," said Tim O'Reilly, CEO of O'Reilly & Associates.
"It's a comprehensive, search-driven information interface. You might say it's
the LexisNexis of the IT world."
Using the Safari Tech Books
Online service, a programmer working on a tight deadline with an urgent
question about Java Beans can type in "Java Beans" and get a list of all of the
Java Beans references in the Safari service, ranked from most relevant to least
relevant. The user can then peruse the full text of relevant titles, chapters
and sections. The service also allows users to bookmark, annotate and cut and
paste code directly, saving time and virtually eliminating the chance of
typographical errors.
"IT professionals learn from print books. However, answers to urgent issues
often come from non-book sources such as chat rooms, user groups and
conversations with colleagues," said Ray Henderson, president of Pearson's
InformIT.com division. "These sources aren't necessarily timely, nor are they
always the most reliable. Safari Tech Books Online gives users
immediate access to information about very specific IT questions -- from the
authors and publishers they trust the most."
More than 600 leading IT titles are scheduled to be up on the site by year
end, with new titles being offered in conjunction with, or sometimes in advance
of, their print publication date. The Safari Tech Books Online service
includes content from leading publishers including Addison Wesley Professional,
Adobe Press, New Riders, O'Reilly & Associates, PeachPit Press, Prentice
Hall PTR, Que, and Sams.
With the Safari service, organizations only pay for what they use. Upon
subscribing to Safari Tech Books
Online, an enterprise or department selects titles to populate a custom
library. Safari's unique swapping feature lets the enterprise or department
exchange books monthly as their needs change or as new titles are
added to the service. If a systems operations group is focused on a Linux
issue one month, their department library can be populated with Linux titles.
Next month they might be focused on a Windows XP issue, so they can choose to
swap out Linux and add in Windows XP titles. No matter which books are in the
user's subscription, Safari Tech Books Online offers full-text search
capabilities for all of the books in the service.
The joint venture, in which Pearson and O'Reilly are equal owners, will sell
its flagship service, Safari Tech Books
Online, to corporations, libraries and universities through each of
their respective direct sales forces. In each case, the Safari enterprise
service can be integrated into the enterprise Intranet through a co-branded
interface. The Safari Tech Books Online service is also available as a
co-branded service for community sites and portals.
Safari currently offers enterprise level IT departments a complimentary
trial to the service for up to ten users. Individual IT professionals
interested in trying the service, can access Safari Tech Books Online
for just $9.99 per month through two leading IT sites: O'Reilly (http://safari.oreilly.com) and
Pearson's IT portal, InformIT (http://safari.informit.com). The Safari service for
individual users has been available at safari.oreilly.com since February 1,
2001 and currently has more than 1,500 individual users.
For more information, access the Safari FAQ page by visiting either of the
following sites:
http://safari.informit.com/mainhlp.asp?help=faq
or
http://safari.oreilly.com/tablhlp.asp?help
About Safarism Books Online
Safari Books Online is a joint venture between the industry's leading IT
publishers O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. and the Pearson Technology Group
(PTG). Safari's flagship service, Safari Tech Books Online, is a
comprehensive online information retrieval service for enterprise-level IT
departments. The service enables enterprises, information portals, libraries,
and universities to offer Web-based access to an exclusive collection of
highly-acclaimed reference content from industry-leading technical publishers:
Addison Wesley Professional, Adobe Press, New Riders, O'Reilly &
Associates, PeachPit Press, Prentice Hall PTR, Que, and Sams. For more
information call Safari Books Online at (617) 848-7025 or visit the
company's Web
site.
About Pearson plc
Pearson plc (NYSE: PSO) is an international media company. Its major
business operations are: The Financial Times Group, which has an international
network of business and financial newspapers and online services that are read
by millions of business executives and investors every day; Pearson Education,
the world's leading education business, which helps teachers teach and students
learn at every stage and in every part of the world; Penguin Putnam, which is
one of the pre-eminent names in consumer publishing, with an unrivalled range
of fiction and non-fiction, bestsellers, and classic titles; and Recoletos, one
of the top media companies in Spain. Pearson also owns a 22% stake in the RTL
Group, Europe's leading integrated broadcasting and communications group. For
more information go to www.pearson.com.
For more information contact:
Holly Nuss
McLean Public Relations
Tel: (650) 685-3850 ext 105
Email: holly_nuss@mcleanpr.com
About O'Reilly
O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators through its books, online services, magazines, and conferences. Since 1978, O'Reilly Media has been a chronicler and catalyst of cutting-edge development, homing in on the technology trends that really matter and spurring their adoption by amplifying "faint signals" from the alpha geeks who are creating the future. An active participant in the technology community, the company has a long history of advocacy, meme-making, and evangelism.
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