Author: Logicalis US

Reading Time: 3 minutes When it comes to mergers and acquisitions, there’s no shortage of IT and cultural issues to overcome, all of which present a relatively equal – and significant – degree of difficulty. That’s the key takeaway from a recent IDG Research survey of 50 IT professionals with companies of 500 employees or more who played a role in a merger, acquisition, spin-off, divestiture or related project within the past 5 years. The good news is a majority of respondents didn’t consider any of the issues to be “very” or “extremely” challenging, although it was a slim majority in several instances, especially for IT issues. But the issues aren’t exactly straightforward, either. The bottom line: All integrations are challenging at least to some extent. Assessing IT M&A Challenges The two IT issues that garnered the most “extremely challenging” votes (18% each) were: “Estimating IT integration efforts, risks, and timelines” and “Properly assess the other company’s business processes.” Both were also assessed as “very challenging” by a fair number of respondents, 28% and 26%, respectively. Two issues also tied, at 48%, for the greatest number of combined “extremely” and “very challenging” votes: “Streamline IT architecture and services” and “Rightsize and optimize assets.” If the response of simply “challenging” is included along with “extremely” and “very,” every issue listed garnered more than 50% of responses. The remaining issues were:...