On 2023-09-19 09:41, Matthew Petach wrote:
On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 7:19AM Mike Hammett <na...@ics-il.net> wrote:
[...]
I've never understood companies that acquire and don't completely
integrate as quickly as they can.
Ah, spoken with the voice of someone who's never been in the position
of:
a) acquiring a company not-much-smaller-than-you that
b) runs on completely different hardware and software and
c) your executives have promised there will be cost savings after the
merger due to "synergies" between the two companies.
^_^;
Let's say you're an all J shop; your scripts, your tooling, everything
expects to be talking to J devices.
Your executives buy a company that has almost the same size
network--but it's all C devices running classic IOS.
You can go to your executives and tell them "hey, to integrate quickly
with our network and tooling, we need to swap out all their C gear for
J gear; it's gonna cost an extra $50M"
The executives respond by pointing at c) above, and denying the request
for money to convert the acquired network to J.
You can go to your network and say "hey, we need to revamp our tooling
and systems to understand how to speak to C and J devices equally, in
spite of wildly different syntaxes for route-maps and the like-it's
going to take 4 more developer headcount to rewrite all the systems."
The executives respond by pointing at c) above, and deny the request
for developer headcount to rewrite your software systems.
Never mind C vs J, the difference in supported features alone is enough
to cause heartburn. Example: the acquired company supports and offers
E-LAN service; the acquiree doesn't. From a systems perspective, the
acquiree has no way to track those without dev effort.
And I guarantee IT's #1 focus is not generating route maps or interface
config. They're focused on processes and reports for the money people.
If the engineering org has no developers, you're either running parallel
or you're in for some long nights.
The general result of acquisitions of similar-sized companies is that
the infrastructure runs in parallel, slowly getting converted over and
unified as gear needs to be replaced, or sites are phased out--because
any other course of action costs more money than the executives had
promised the shareholders, the board, or the VCs, depending on what
stage your company is at.
Swift integrations cost money, and most acquisitions promise cost
savings instead of warning of increased costs due to integration.
That's why most companies don't integrate quickly. :(
Matt
-Brian
