American Business Media merges with Software and Information Industry Association

American Business Media (ABM) is merging with the Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA). According to a story in Folio:, the merger was initiated by the SIIA but approved by the ABM board. ABM CEO Clark Pettit said that, over the long term, ABM would not have been financially sustainable.

“This was driven by our own strategic view of where the industry is going. Associations have to bring together the pieces of an industry needed to develop the business models of the future, and allow members to align with where their customers are going, not align the communities of the past.”

It means that business media members will now be mixed into a 1,000-member association that includes companies far removed from publishing, including the Stock Exchange of Thailand, TD Ameritrade, Kaplan Test Prep, Dell Software, Red Hat, the National Association of Electrical Distributors and Manufacturers Life Insurance.

ABM will remain as a unit within SIIA and for now the name is to be retained and the New York office kept open.

There is an interesting contrast between the way things turned out in Canada and the way they have turned out in the U.S.  Magazines Canada took a "big tent" approach,  opening up to  represent both consumer and business media. As a result much of the membership of the Canadian Business Press (CBP) decamped to join Magazines Canada.  As a result, CBP decided to relinquish its role as a member organization and restrict itself to running the annual Kenneth R. Wilson b2b magazine awards program. 

(The equivalent  to the Canadian solution in the U.S. would have been for ABM to form an alliance with the Association of Magazine Media (MPA). )