Avaya is a ten-year-old company that was spun out of Lucent Technologies in 2000. Avaya provides communications systems, contact centers, data solutions and related services to leading businesses and organizations around the world. Based in Basking Ridge, NJ, Avaya is the world's leading vendor of enterprise telephony and contact center systems and has enjoyed a solid reputation for providing its customers with communications and collaboration technologies that help them boost productivity and compete more successfully and cost-effectively. Avaya is heavily invested in R&D to develop innovative, next-generation products that will help bolster its market share, increase its product offerings and position it solidly at the forefront of the global telecommunications industry.

Avaya's R&D group consists of about 3,000 professionals dispersed around the globe. This group is an important component of Avaya's competitiveness and long-term success. It is imperative that the R&D team has the ability to quickly learn new skills and acquire new knowledge according to the demands of their jobs and the new products and technologies being offered by Avaya.

Avaya had subscribed to an online resource library accessible to various departments throughout the company. R&D managers found that the existing digital library did not provide their group with suitable access to the technology information they needed the most, and it did not contain some of the leading technology publishers. Training managers needed to find a cost-effective, technology-rich resource that complimented existing training tools and information sources. Their solution had to meet specific criteria suggested, in part, by employees themselves. It had to:

Avaya's learning managers determined that the R&D team consistently requested books and resources from O'Reilly Media, citing O'Reilly Media as one of the leaders in technology and programming publications and information. Safari Books Online is the only online library that partners with both O'Reilly and Pearson Technology, the two publishers accounting for more than 55% of the leading technology books currently sold. It was clear that Safari Books Online best met the needs of Avaya's R&D group.

The pilot subscription program rolled out in October of 2009. All 250 licensed seats were claimed within two days. Safari Books Online revised the license agreement to 500 seats, which were filled within 60 days. Today, Avaya has a license agreement for 1,000 seats and considers the subscription offering a succes: