Apologies in advance, this is going to become a multi-part series. Honestly, a book could be written on this question alone. I’m going to break this up over a few days, but don’t worry, you will still get your next challenge tomorrow!

Last week’s challenge:

Continuing the theme of the week lets look at what prep work would be required prior to the close of the sale. In this case, Acme Inc. went in on the cloud software offering by offering Anvils as a Service, and this will be offloaded to Widgets Inc. as its own unit including about half the current employees working on the product. The product itself is also cloud based, but runs on a different cloud provider from what Widgets Inc. uses.

What common pieces would be impacted as a part of this carve-out, but would not be conveyed to Widgets Inc.? As a follow-up question, would you make the common pieces available, and if so, how?

This is what is usually referred to as the difference between “enterprise” and “the business.” In the tech space, this is the shared services vs. business logic.

Looking at the common infrastructure pieces there is the people infrastructure in addition to the tech that will need to be factored in. From that standpoint, we start with the communication and normal productivity suite (email, chat, and core document apps). Next comes the financials (how you get paid, how they get paid, expenses, etc.), and lastly the various reports that you use to track the KPIs for the business. The one commonality is that none of this will be conveyed. Email is a possibility, but ultimately if you do get stuff, it will be a one-time dump.

With core infrastructure, this usually sits at the enterprise level and is not subject to be conveyed. However, the underlying data and logic behind it may become useful to translate into your own ecosystem. Access controls, integration and deployment configs, and even common libraries.

What other things can you think of? Reply and let me know so we can keep the exchange going!

cab