Exhibit 99.2
News Announcement
VIRGIN.COM AWARDS (pound)1 MILLION CONTRACT TO BRIGHT STATION
London, England; 13 February 2001 - virgin.com (www.virgin.com) the Virgin
portal and gateway to all Virgin businesses online, has awarded technology
company Bright Station plc (LSE: BSN, NASDAQ: BSTN) (www.brightstation.com) and
Intel Online Services Ltd (www.intel.com) a three-year, (pound)1 million
contract to host and manage content on its brand portal. This will include
technology enhancements based on Bright Station technologies such as Knowledge
Management infrastructure from Smartlogik (www.smartlogik.com).
The contract award follows the recent formation of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:
INTC) and Bright Station's wide-ranging strategic business and marketing
alliance, including joint development, technology licensing and sales and
marketing activities. The relationship with Virgin.com will be managed through
Bright Station Symphony Ltd, which was established on 10 January 2001,
specifically to co-ordinate opportunities arising out of the series of
agreements between Bright Station and Intel.
Ashley Stockwell, Managing Director of virgin.com, stated, "Bright Station is an
ideal partner given their wide array of applications and solutions backed by
Intel's technology backbone. They have already begun to deliver robust hosting
solutions, which we plan to develop along with future content and functionality
updates. With the rapid growth of Virgin's products and services, we recognized
the need to deploy solutions to help us serve the Virgin business and better
enable us to tap our collective knowledge and full brand potential. After a
competitive tender, we concluded that Bright Station and Intel Online Services
were the perfect team."
Contd./ 2
The enhanced virgin.com portal will be featured in Virgin V.Shops as well as on
line.
"Our alliance with Intel is off to a fast start, and we are very pleased to team
with them in providing solutions and services to virgin.com, one of the world's
leading brands," said Bright Station Symphony's CEO Robin Kearon.
- 2 -
For further information, please contact:
Nick Chaloner
Head of Corporate Communications
Bright Station plc +44 (0)20 7930 6900
nickchaloner@brightstation.com
John Olsen / Nick Lockwood
Hogarth Partnership +44 (0)20 7357 9477
nicklockwood@hogarthpr.co.uk
Jackie McQuillan
Virgin Group +44 (0)20 7313 2051
jackie.mcquillan@virgin.co.uk
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Intel
Intel, the world's largest chipmaker, is also a leading manufacturer of
computer, networking and communications products. Additional information about
Intel is available at www.intel.com/pressroom.
About Virgin
Virgin is the third most recognised brand in the U.K. and is rapidly becoming
the first global brand of the 21st Century. Over 200 Virgin companies trade
around the world in a variety of distinct product areas, including travel,
entertainment, transport, financial services, telecommunications, retailing,
publishing, consumer goods and the Internet. Additional information about Virgin
is available at http://www.virgin.com/about
About Bright Station
Bright Station plc is a leading creator of innovative Internet technologies and
technology-driven businesses. It is comprised of the following:
Smartlogik - Creates decision makers and corporate efficiencies through its
superior knowledge management solutions. Smartlogik solutions combine
state-of-the-art proprietary technologies that enable user-friendly searching,
indexing and categorization of unstructured information with business-friendly
implementation services to ensure that every corporation realizes maximum
benefit from its Smartlogik knowledge management solution.
Contd. 3
- 3 -
Sparza - An eCommerce ASP providing online retailers with state-of-the-art
Internet shopping solutions at a fraction of the cost. By outsourcing their
entire web store operations to Sparza, retailers can remove eCommerce from the
balance sheet and concentrate on the value-adding parts of the business such as
customer service, product development and marketing.
WebTop - The next generation Internet search services company with one of the
largest web indexes in the world. Over 500 million web pages have been
catalogued and organized into information zones to deliver context specific and
accurate information retrieval on the web.
OfficeShopper - The Internet procurement and business supplies vendor.
Bright Station Ventures - responsible for nurturing, and investing in, promising
technology and Internet start-up businesses leveraging Bright Station's
world-class technology assets and expertise.