Do I need to hire a plumber?

Short answer: YES

Snark aside, one of the things from the integration standpoint is the amount of plumbing required. Those in the tech field long enough know this by heart having to plumb different components together from SaaS providers, different vendors, and even some custom bits that power your business.

As you can imagine, even buying a piece of someone else’s business introduces a lot additional complexity, and… PLUMBING!

You team has done this many of times in the past whether it is incorporating a new piece of software or migrating between vendors. I’ve even written about how to handle these kinds of transitions.

There are a few key differences:

It is not just a piece of software, but the full stack potentially even down to relocating hardware between data centers.
There is a very short and strict timeline to get things transferred over. Otherwise normally stiff penalties go into effect.
Temporary networks will be created and cut to facilitate the highly controlled transfer of information between two entities that will last as long as the aforementioned time frame is in effect.
There is no green-field integration work.

Before getting ahead of yourself begin looking on Yelp for a plumber (or general contractor), do you know what the ultimate goal of the acquisition looks like?

PS: Will be taking the weekend off to shore up the infrastructure for the list, and try to structure the messages out better. Until next week, happy integrating!