How Best to Handle an Acquisition?

Hello,
Our company has recently purchased a smaller company, and I am about to
begin the process of assessing their current IT infrastructure, to see how
best to intergrate it with ours.
I have been told by management that the acquired company must continue to
operate under its own name, and hence email addresses must remain unchanged.
They must however be brought into our domain.
We are a Windows Server 2003 / Win XP environment, with VMWare ESX 3.5
virtualised servers, and use Citrix for publishing apps.
My initial questions are -
- What is the best way to introduce an acquired company into your existing
domain?
- Is it possible to introduce a child domain which does not contain the same
domain extension? eg parent = @parentcompany.com.au, new child domain =
@abc.com.au

Thanks - Wayne
Virtual Roamer

 

If both companies are at least at Win2003 forest level, you can establish
forest trust between the companies. That way everything stays as before, but
users in one forest can access resources in another forest using single sign
on.

If existing forests are below Win2003 forest levels, you can establish
domain trusts between domains. The difference between forest and domain
trusts is that forest trusts encompasses all domains in a forest, while
domain trust is just between two domains.

Another option is to create another domain tree in your existing forest.
Another tree means that the new domain name will not be in contigous
namespace as the root domain (child domain, ie it will be completely new
domain name). To do this you will need to decomission the old domain and
introduce the new domain, but this time in your existing forest.

In any case, you need to do good planning. You will probably use tools like
ADMT and you will probably move Exchange mailboxes. Perhaps it's time to
look for professional help.

"waynen" <waynen@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4A7E0616-5D8D-4BFA-9895-D5461C751515@microsoft.com...
> Hello,
> Our company has recently purchased a smaller company, and I am about to
> begin the process of assessing their current IT infrastructure, to see how
> best to intergrate it with ours.
> I have been told by management that the acquired company must continue to
> operate under its own name, and hence email addresses must remain
> unchanged.
> They must however be brought into our domain.
> We are a Windows Server 2003 / Win XP environment, with VMWare ESX 3.5
> virtualised servers, and use Citrix for publishing apps.
> My initial questions are -
> - What is the best way to introduce an acquired company into your existing
> domain?
> - Is it possible to introduce a child domain which does not contain the
> same
> domain extension? eg parent = @parentcompany.com.au, new child domain =
> @abc.com.au
>
> Thanks - Wayne
> Virtual Roamer

 

waynen <waynen@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> Our company has recently purchased a smaller company, and I am about
> to begin the process of assessing their current IT infrastructure, to
> see how best to intergrate it with ours.
> I have been told by management that the acquired company must
> continue to operate under its own name, and hence email addresses
> must remain unchanged. They must however be brought into our domain.
> We are a Windows Server 2003 / Win XP environment, with VMWare ESX 3.5
> virtualised servers, and use Citrix for publishing apps.
> My initial questions are -
> - What is the best way to introduce an acquired company into your
> existing domain?
> - Is it possible to introduce a child domain which does not contain
> the same domain extension? eg parent = @parentcompany.com.au, new
> child domain = @abc.com.au
>
> Thanks - Wayne
> Virtual Roamer

Much depends on what they run already. From what you write above it doesn't
sound like you need a child domain. If you need to bring them into your
domain you can just do so - check out ADMT. The fact that they're still
going to operate under their own name surely doesn't mean they have to
maintain their oldcompany.local AD domain, right? Nobody sees that. And
email is unrelated - they can keep using oldcompany.com addresses, although
you don't mention what either of you runs as a mail server.

 

Waynen,
You need to establish exactly what the objective is. E-mail address is
independent of windows domain so, given they will keep their e-mail
addresses, you need to determine the objective of "bringing them in to our
domain".
To answer your specific questions:
1) There is no best way, but you can migrate accounts into a domain using
ADMT.
2) No, not unless your domain is called "com", which seems unlikely.
It is not quite what you asked, but:
- Without knowing anything about the companies, I would suggest you start by
thinking of the new company as a separate OU in your domain, and then
scrutinise hard all the reasons you think that won't work.
- You have an option to leave servers in a Resource domain and only migrate
users. This avoids having to do anything complicated with servers and
services.
Hope that helps,
Anthony
http://www.airdesk.com



"waynen" <waynen@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:4A7E0616-5D8D-4BFA-9895-D5461C751515@microsoft.com...
> Hello,
> Our company has recently purchased a smaller company, and I am about to
> begin the process of assessing their current IT infrastructure, to see how
> best to intergrate it with ours.
> I have been told by management that the acquired company must continue to
> operate under its own name, and hence email addresses must remain
> unchanged.
> They must however be brought into our domain.
> We are a Windows Server 2003 / Win XP environment, with VMWare ESX 3.5
> virtualised servers, and use Citrix for publishing apps.
> My initial questions are -
> - What is the best way to introduce an acquired company into your existing
> domain?
> - Is it possible to introduce a child domain which does not contain the
> same
> domain extension? eg parent = @parentcompany.com.au, new child domain =
> @abc.com.au
>
> Thanks - Wayne
> Virtual Roamer