SunGard Higher Education, The New York Times Company and Epsilen Collaborate to Support Advances in e-Learning

NEW YORK & MALVERN, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SunGard Higher Education, The New York Times Company and Epsilen today announced a partnership to help provide more flexible e-learning options to enrich the learning experience. As part of the project, SunGard Higher Education will integrate Epsilen’s e-learning environment with its solutions to help institutions offer their constituents Web 2.0 standards-based personal e-learning solutions.

“Education has long been a focus for The Times Company”

Developments in e-learning and social networking, coupled with academic needs for relevant and reputable content, are changing the dynamics and technology requirements of education. To help address these needs, The New York Times Company and SunGard Higher Education will offer Epsilen to SunGard Higher Education customers. Epsilen can be implemented as a standalone solution or to augment the functionality of other campus and learning solutions. It is delivered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis which provides remote hosting and management.

Through its relationship with The New York Times, Epsilen allows teachers and learners to access Times content back to 1851, creating a rich database of articles and information that can be of help for researching and teaching many subjects. The New York Times Company is a majority owner of Epsilen.

"Education has long been a focus for The Times Company,” said Janet L. Robinson, president and chief executive officer, The New York Times Company. “We are very pleased to collaborate with SunGard and Epsilen as our three companies share a commitment to higher education and a history of Internet innovation."

The collaboration illustrates SunGard Higher Education’s commitment to its newly announced Open Digital Campus which gives colleges and universities more flexibility to choose the technologies, delivery models, open source and vendor solutions that fit their unique needs. It provides new options for institutions to extend their current investments and helps deliver measurable benefits to the constituents they serve.

“Customers look to SunGard Higher Education to help them find better ways to teach, learn, manage and connect,” said Ron Lang, chief executive officer, SunGard Higher Education. “We created the Open Digital Campus strategy because institutions want the ability to assemble a variety of systems, applications and components to serve very specific needs. We have strengthened our academic focus and expanded our technology vision to meet those needs. Epsilen and The New York Times Company present new opportunities that enrich the learning experience and support our vision of giving colleges and universities more flexibility to shape how technology meets their evolving needs.”

About The New York Times Company

The New York Times Company, a leading media company with 2008 revenues of $2.9 billion, includes The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com. The Company’s core purpose is to enhance society by creating, collecting and distributing high-quality news, information and entertainment.

About Epsilen

Epsilen Environment combines Web 2.0 social networking with the best practices of eLearning course delivery. It is the result of six years of research and development at the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). In March 2008, The New York Times Company purchased a majority ownership interest in Epsilen, LLC, working with Epsilen to provide its clients with the repository of New York Times articles, multimedia and archives dating back to 1851.

About SunGard Higher Education

SunGard Higher Education serves colleges, universities and foundations in 40 countries worldwide. Through its Open Digital Campus strategy, SunGard collaborates with the higher education community and provides software and services to help institutions find better ways to teach, learn, manage and connect. To learn more, please visit www.sungardhe.com.

About SunGard

SunGard is one of the world’s leading software and IT services companies. SunGard serves more than 25,000 customers in more than 70 countries.

SunGard provides software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector. SunGard also provides disaster recovery services, managed IT services, information availability consulting services and business continuity management software.

With annual revenue exceeding $5 billion, SunGard is ranked 435 on the Fortune 500 and is the largest privately held business software and services company on the Forbes list of private businesses. Based on information compiled by Datamonitor*, SunGard is the third largest provider of business applications software after Oracle and SAP. Continuity, Insurance & Risk has recognized SunGard as service provider of the year an unprecedented six times. For more information, please visit SunGard at www.sungard.com.

*January 2009 Technology Vendors Financial Database Tracker http://www.datamonitor.com

Trademark Information: SunGard, Open Digital Campus and the SunGard logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of SunGard Data Systems Inc. or its subsidiaries in the U.S. and other countries. All other trade names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.