I spend considerable time covering IT mergers and acquisitions. Now, it's time for me to shift the spotlight directly onto our business. Specifically, Nine Lives Media Inc., the company behind MSPmentor, has been acquired by Penton Media.

Joe Panettieri, Former Editorial Director

August 30, 2011

2 Min Read
MSPmentor and Nine Lives Media Acquired By Penton Media

accelerate-startup

I spend considerable time covering IT mergers and acquisitions. Now, it’s time for me to shift the spotlight directly onto our business. Specifically, Nine Lives Media Inc., the company behind MSPmentor, has been acquired by Penton Media. Effective immediately, the Nine Lives Media brands — MSPmentor, The VAR Guy and Talkin’ Cloud — are part of Penton’s Technology Group. But don’t call it an exit strategy. This is an acceleration strategy. Here’s why.

As you may recall, Amy Katz and I launched Nine Lives Media in 2008. Our goal was to disrupt established IT media markets, and define emerging IT media markets. The result? Our blog-driven communities have redefined how the IT Channel communicates, collaborates and marches forward.

Our commitment to our mission, our community members, and our sponsors continues under Penton Media’s ownership. We’re not leaving. Instead, our team plans to engage even more deeply with the IT Channel and the managed services market.

Powerful Parent

Indeed, we’re gaining some clear economies of scale. Let me give you some examples. Led by CEO Sharon Rowlands, Penton:

  • last year educated 65,000 industry professionals with over 500 webinars.

  • attracted more than 90 million individuals to its websites.

  • hosted exhibitions and events that attracted 100,000 professionals.

Nine Lives joins Penton Media’s Technology Group — which includes the Windows IT Pro community and other powerful brands. The Nine Lives Media team and our leading IT Channel communities — MSPmentor, Talkin’ Cloud and The VAR Guy — report into Peg Miller, Penton’s Technology Group market leader.

In a prepared statement, Miller said:

“Nine Lives is the perfect complement to our leading IT and developer brands, enabling us  to provide both business and technology acumen to the entire technology ecosystem of IT professionals and developers, channel providers, and independent software vendors and hardware vendors. We’ve already seen strong growth in the IT channel with adoption of our newly launched Penton Marketing Services — helping them to run their businesses more effectively.”

So, where do we go from here? Amy continues to run the Nine Lives brands as president, and I march forward running our editorial operations. Our sales and editorial teams also remain fully engaged. Familiar voices like Daniel Berthiaume, Nicholas Mukhar and John Moore continue to blog for MSPmentor. As do I.

Amy and I gave this business combination a lot of thought. When we sat down with the Penton executive team, we had a clear meeting of the minds. Amy, our advisors and the Penton team hammered out the deal. Now, we’ll work hard to impress you with the results.

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About the Author(s)

Joe Panettieri

Former Editorial Director, Nine Lives Media, a division of Penton Media

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