When it comes to merger and acquisition activity – 2023 is poised to be an active year despite uncertain macroeconomic conditions. As always, financial due diligence will be the cornerstone of successful M&A endeavors. Unfortunately for IT teams, there’s no similar process for scrutinizing the network. Often the work of ingesting or connecting networks doesn’t start until after the contracts are “signed, sealed, and delivered.”
While it’s understandable that the financial analysis is extremely detailed, it’s important to realize the impact IT integration has on the success of the deal. As the backbone of the business, IT integration is the lynchpin of ensuring productivity, creating unified processes, and maximizing the value of the deal.
As one CIO recently said to me, “On paper, we are one company, but we have about a dozen individual networks.” This creates security risks, hampers employees’ efforts to access data, and creates friction for customers. The soft costs of a poorly integrated network can weigh on a company for years, extending the amount of time it takes to recognize revenue gains and can even cause losses.
Fortunately, digital twin technology provides a simplified path to network integration. Without detailed knowledge of the acquired company’s network, it’s impossible to ensure safe and effective connectivity. Considering that we typically find 30% more devices in a network than our customers expected, this is a tall order. Most IT shops are using outdated inventories, high-level (and also outdated) Visio diagrams, and a healthy dash of hope in their efforts to ensure the network is secure, reliable, and behaving as expected.
A digital twin takes the guesswork out of network integration by tracing every possible path, collecting and analyzing L2-L4 device configuration and state data, and making it possible to verify security policies are being enforced as intended.
If you’d like to learn more about how this works, please read our white paper, Resolving Key Post Merger IT Integration Challenges with a Digital Twin, or view our recent BrightTALK webinar, A Case Study: Merging Two Clouds Post Acquisition.
