Pearson Moves Leading SIF Agent Development Kit to Open Source Licensing

Contribution Exemplifies Continued Commitment to Growing and Strengthening Schools Interoperability Framework Initiative

SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today Pearson continued its decade of leadership in the Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) movement with the migration of all versions of its SIFWorks^® Agent Development Kit (ADK^®) to the business-friendly Apache 2.0 free and open source software license. This migration represents a big win for the SIF software development community and existing customers can migrate to the new release with no change in their agent development, sales or delivery approach.

“Since its launch, SIF has been a true model of collaboration among leaders in the ed-tech community and state and district education leaders”

As the gold standard for SIF Agent development tools, the SIFWorks ADK offers K-12 application vendors and districts a professional-grade developer's tool for creating sophisticated, robust SIF agents. By freeing software developers to concentrate on the integration logic and data management specific to their application, the ADK greatly accelerates agent development time. Major developers outside of Pearson have deployed ADK-based agents in hundreds of districts and many state agencies. The ADK is well known for its code efficiency and multi-platform capabilities.

“Since its launch, SIF has been a true model of collaboration among leaders in the ed-tech community and state and district education leaders,” said Steve Curtis, President of Pearson’s Data Solutions group. “After years of investing in the growth and development of SIFWorks ADK, making it available to the community under open source exemplifies Pearson’s continued commitment to this industry-wide initiative to leverage data to improve education. As this effort moves forward, a number of our long-time SIF partners will be contributing code under the same license and together, as a community, we will continue to build the future of our schools’ data infrastructure.” Pearson Data Solutions is the premier organization for data interoperability solutions in K-12, with solutions for facilitating data collection, aggregation, and exchange to address the needs of pre-K through postsecondary and the workforce.

The complete binary code for the ADK is available today under the Apache 2.0 license at http://pearsondatasolutions.com/developers. The source code, including community tools such as wikis, source code control, and a brand new forum, will be made available on a widely used open source software site by mid-summer. Support details will be announced at the same time.

Customers with existing ADK contracts (“Upgrade Assurance”) will be supported both through existing Pearson channels and the open source site for the next several months. By Dec. 31, 2011 the Upgrade Assurance program will end and all ADK support will be provided through the open source site.

Over time the SIF movement has expanded into new territories and adopted new enterprise technologies. With the advent of SIF-US 2.5 and the Web Services transport, Pearson anticipates that SIF developers will begin adopting the SOAP/Web Services transport layer to take advantage of the wide variety of Web Services-based integration tools and expertise available. Placing the ADK under an open source license will expand the opportunities for developers to combine toolkits and improve the capabilities of their SIF agents.

About Pearson

Pearson (NYSE:PSO) the global leader in education and education technology, provides innovative enterprise interoperability solutions for the PK-20 education market. Through its SIFWorks^® integration platform, National Transcript Center solution, comprehensive professional services and relationships with business partners and educators, Pearson connects the systems that power education. For more information, visit www.pearsondatasolutions.com.