‘Prior to coming to EchoStor, I’d been a CIO in the pharmacy business for 16 or 17 years. And the lines of services and the maturity of the services coming from Pennant, specifically in life sciences, in heavy regulated environments with the FDA and so on, accelerates our ability to have a major impact now in that life sciences market,’ says EchoStor CIO Cale Anjoorian.
IT solution provider EchoStor Technologies Tuesday unveiled the acquisition of Pennant Networks, a fellow solution provider and MSP with a focus on the life sciences vertical.
With the move, EchoStor, ranked No. 128 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500, is making a play to be a major player in life sciences managed services said Cale Anjoorian (left in photo), CIO for the Norwood, Mass.-based company.
“As a former customer of both EchoStor and Pennant Networks, I am extremely excited as this allows us to continue to expand within the life sciences industry,” Anjoorian told CRN. “It also allows us to continue to mature our managed services programs within EchoStor.”
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Terms of the deal, which has already completed, were not disclosed.
Pennant Networks was formed in early 2021 with a focus specifically on the life sciences market, said Thom Serra, CEO and founder of that company.
“To my knowledge, we’re the only reseller focused specifically on life sciences,” Serra told CRN. “This includes companies trying to bring drugs to market, and really the ecosystem around that, be it contract manufacturers, research-focused organizations, and the venture capital firms funding and incubating these companies. So really, anything that touches the life sciences vertical.”
Pennant Networks is based in the Boston area, which Serra described as the largest and most heavily funded life sciences cluster in the world.
“There’s an incredible explosion of these types of companies here,” he said. “Working with companies that are FDA regulated or in and around that vertical require a different level of expertise to support than traditional companies require. So that’s the interest, from our perspective, in working with companies like this exclusively.”
Serra declined to discuss whether Pennant Networks is profitable by saying it is a privately-held company.
“We had a run of five years where we were growing pretty rapidly both in terms of customer acquisition as well as resources that we were hiring,” he said. “The opportunity from our perspective to join EchoStor expands our growth. As a smaller boutique VAR, we’re somewhat limited in our ability to service our customers. By partnering with EchoStor, which has a breadth of services and capabilities beyond what our team had, we can now bring much more of our customers end-to-end support for their functions and activities across the board.”
Prior to its acquisition of Pennant Networks, EchoStor had a pretty robust business, but hadn’t been able to penetrate the life sciences market in a big way, Anjoorian said.
“Prior to coming to EchoStor, I’d been a CIO in the pharmacy business for 16 or 17 years,” he said. “And the lines of services and the maturity of the services coming from Pennant, specifically in life sciences, in heavy regulated environments with the FDA and so on, accelerates our ability to have a major impact now in that life sciences market.”
EchoStor and Pennant Networks got together in part because the New England business community tends to be very small where everyone knows everyone, Serra said.
“I’ve known about EchoStor as an individual for at least 20 years,” he said. “Over the years, I got to know some of their team really well, including Michael Johnson, known as ‘MJ,’ EchoStor’s CEO. In fact, we had a couple of common accounts over the years where we were servicing the same customers, so we swam in the same circles. And I got to know the team pretty well through general business activities.”
The two companies had not formally partnered in the past, Serra said.
Anjoorian said there was a tremendous mutual respect at EchoStor in Tennant Networks.
“This computer services and reselling industry is small, and I think there was mutual respect between both organizations,” he said. “We sort of agreed to not agree to swim in the same lanes. Now that deal’s off because we are one company now, and are really looking forward to continuing to mature our services catalog and expand into additional industries, life sciences being one of them. This is really just continuing to follow our strategic roadmap.”
Anjoorian said the two companies are already working to integrate their businesses.
“We have a plan in place,” he said. “We’re executing to that plan as we speak to fully get them embedded. But as far as existing Pennant customers, it’s business as usual with no impact.”
Looking ahead to the rest of 2026, EchoStor will continue its commitment to expanding its managed services programs, Anjoorian said.
“Obviously, the acquisition of Pennant really helps within the life sciences industry,
Continuing to offer to expand our catalog of services,” he said. “EchoStor has evolved not to be just a reseller, but to be a well-rounded enterprise advanced services platform organization. We have a tremendous variety of different technology services frameworks that we bring to the market.”
Pennant Networks is EchoStor’s second acquisition following its September purchase of CyberNorth, a ServiceNow and data center services solution provider.
“As part of our strategic roadmap, M&A is always an option, and we will always actively look,” Anjoorian said. “If there is a new opportunity that will advance EchoStor’s roadmap and our presence in the marketplace, we will do it.”
