Blackboard has completed the acquisition of privately-held The NTI Group, Inc., a leading provider of mass messaging and notification solutions for educational and government organizations.  An announcement of the closing was made January 31st in a news release. You can find the original announcement of the acquisition here.

We see a tremendous amount of synergy between our two companies.  Throughout its existence, education has been a key focus for NTI.  Since launching its first mass communication in early 2001, NTI has delivered hundreds of millions of messages for thousands of clients.  Today, NTI’s Connect® family of notification services is used by hundreds of higher education institutions and one in every six students enrolled in the nation’s K-12 public schools are served via the service.  NTI also serves myriad municipalities, government agencies, and military institutions across the country.

The combination of Blackboard and NTI adds another mission-critical offering to Blackboard’s existing suite of enterprise products and we look forward to expanding our professional learning, security, and communication solutions into each of the markets that we serve.

“I believe the union of our companies will create substantial cross-selling opportunities and significant economies of scale across the combined company,” said Michael Chasen, Blackboard’s President and Chief Executive Officer.  “Teachers, students and parents are increasingly managing their lives on PDAs and we are bringing our technology directly to them.”

“We are extremely pleased to become a part of Blackboard and enhance their product offering with our mission critical communications technology,” said Robin Richards, NTI Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.  “We believe that we can leverage Blackboard’s existing infrastructure, geographic diversity and relationships in higher education to efficiently expand the reach of our communications platform.”

NTI's Connect-ED® offering will be offered by Blackboard under the Blackboard Connect™ brand.