In the previous couple of emails, we touched on the unknowns and started by drilling down in the application stack. The next question is how mature is your infrastructure?

Its a simple question, and yet this is the most difficult part to work with.

What do you think of when you hear infrastructure?

Like most with an engineering background, your mind more than likely went towards the physical hardware, networking, databases, and the various applications that power your own applications and your company.

That is the first part, and will contribute towards the conveying of the acquired company’s assets whether it is the applications or data. The maturity of the technologies and the way you built it out over the years will play a part in how well the new components can be absorbed without additional scaffolding or infrastructure. Additionally, this maturity will play a major factor in ensuring proper scaling so your current components don’t buckle under the new load.

There is the second part that is equally important, and that is your process. What does your change management process look like, and how do you track the changes? When you deploy updates, how automated is the process? This, more than anything else, will dictate how much work is required to not only establish the temporary connections required to convey the data/applications over, but also on-boarding the new solutions.

When you are getting ready to plan the migration or integration, the focus and attention will be on the first part. You not only need to work within the confines of the second part, but you will also need to transform the incoming assets to fit into your processes. This may include migrating data into your Change Management Database, asset trackers, issue trackers, in addition to your code repositories.

This is where a self-assessment can come in very handy. Especially for partial acquisitions common with businesses looking to expand a specific portfolio. Once you know the lay of the land, then you will be able to piece together what needs to be added, modified, or enhanced.

Where do you think your gaps are? Would you be able to bring on a company that runs their microservices on bare-metal for example?

Hit reply, and let me know!

cab