New York, NY, August 30, 2011- Sharon Rowlands, CEO of Penton Media, announced today that the company has acquired Nine Lives Media and its leading online destinations: MSPmentor, Talkin’ Cloud and The VAR Guy. Nine Lives will become a business unit of Penton’s Technology Group, joining Windows IT Pro, SQL Server Magazine, SharePoint Pro, DevPro, Cloud IT Pro, Mobile DevPro, Connected Planet and System iNetwork. Terms were not disclosed.
“While Penton’s Technology Group is largely focused on providing content to IT professionals and developers, Nine Lives focuses on the IT channel, a strategic audience that’s shaping rapidly growing markets like IT services, managed services and cloud computing,” said Rowlands.
Nine Lives Media was founded in 2003 by CEO Amy Katz, and Executive VP/Editorial Director Joe Panettieri. Katz and Panettieri join Penton, effective immediately. The unit will report to Peg Miller, Penton’s Technology Group market leader.
“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,” said Miller.
“We’re thrilled to combine our growing audiences and growing brands with Penton Media,‘ said Katz. “We see clear opportunities to drive additional growth and offer more of what our readers and sponsors have requested.”
Through blogs, research, Internet video and sponsored events, Nine Lives’ sponsors engage with a unique community of VARs, MSPs and cloud services providers. Each Nine Lives brand serves a strategic, influential technology market, with more than 18,500 Twitter followers in the lT channel:
MSPmentor (www.mspmentor.net and @mspmentor) is the #1 media platform covering managed services.
Talkin’ Cloud (www.talkincloud.com and @talkin_cloud) is the first video-enhanced blog in the IT Channel, reporting on the rapidly growing cloud industry.
The VAR Guy (www.thevarguy.com and @thevarguy) is the #1 channel blog in the value-added reseller and IT service provider market.
Foundation Partners, LLC (www.foundation-partners com) acted as an adviser to Nine Lives Media Inc. in connection with this transaction.
Equity Partners II, an investment fund sponsored by Wasserstein & Co., LP, and its co-investors. For additional information on the company and its businesses, visit www.penton.com.
