Most migrations have a clear source environment and a clear destination. You know what’s moving and where it’s going.

M&A migrations don’t work that way.

When two organizations combine, neither environment was built to become part of the other. They have different naming conventions, different identity structures, different admin practices that accumulated over years — and now everything has to align, usually under a timeline that was set by the deal, not by IT.

On one acquisition migration, the complexity wasn’t in the technical execution. It was in reconciling two Active Directory forests that had overlapping structures and naming conflicts that nobody caught until we were already mid-project.

We worked through it. But the lesson was clear: M&A migration requires more discovery time, not less, precisely because you’re starting with two environments that were never designed to connect.

The deal closes on a date. The integration finishes when it’s ready.

#Migration #MergersAndAcquisitions #IT