Resolved Question: Business mergers - deciding which technologies to keep and which to replace?

17 August 2010, 7:08 am

Hi, I am currently revising for an exam in Advanced Development (computing) at the end of the month. I remember there was a lecture about business mergers, then I went off sick for a month and I cant find anything about this subject on the web or in the lecture slides. I remember we talked about things like if you have two businesses merging, each using completely different technologies, how you decide which technologies to carry forward. "Technologies" includes a number of different aspects such as web languages (PHP vs VB.Net), software languages (Java vs C#), software from other sources (such as if one company uses Word and the other uses OpenOffice), database engines or DBMSs (mySQL vs SQL Server). Can anyone enlighten me on this subject? I know we talked about like going for the technologies which are supported the most, those which are most difficult to swap to the alternative (i.e. if one company uses .net a lot, but the other uses PHP for very little (and does not use .net at all at the time) then the obvious solution is to rewrite the PHP code in the equivalent .net code). We also talked about the fact that it is sometimes best to leave them as is - so you have two different apps, but centralise the data (or you alter both apps to use both existing databases). This can save a lot of time and effort and allow the business to concentrate on other things. What other factors are there for a business to consider in the decision as to what technologies to keep and which to throw away? Anyone have anything else to share that may come in useful should a question on this subject come up? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Richard Thank you TheMadProfessor. I tried to rate your answer up but I am not level 2 yet. I dont know how I didnt think of the point about size of the businesses - should have been obvious.. I suppose another thing to consider would be what the tools can do. For example if MS Office can do a lot more than OpenOffice then it is best to go for MS Office. However there is also cost - if it costs £15000 to buy all of the Office licenses then it may not be viable, and may be best to go for OpenOffice even if it is more work. Thanks again. Richard... Read More »

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