Poor amalgamation of IT departments between merging organizations is a major obstacle to delivering shareholder value in a Merger and Acquisition (M&A). IT leaders should invest in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) now, so they can leverage it in the future to simplify the technology integration.
The key lessons are:
- Mergers demonstrate a key value proposition of SOA: ease-of-integration.
- The M&A is a business decision, but with important IT implications.
- Lackluster planning for IT integration can lead to failure.
The presence of SOA reduces the complexity of a merger between two IT departments.