Procedures for Company Acquisitions

[FROGGYJ]

I have never been in a situation with company acquisitions, but this is what I face now. I'm wondering what is the best solution to integrate another company when it relates to AD?
The situation I'm facing is acquiring a company with approx 100-200 desktops and 4-6 servers. We are located in different provinces and I can't tell you at this point what kind of link speed we have established between them.

Do you demote everything on their end and then promote onto your domain?

Do you merge their forest into another AD tree on your end so you'd have 2 tree's?

Do you merge their domain into your forest?

Which method makes most sense and what are some factors one needs to consider when making such a decision? What are the steps necessary to follow once you've commited to your decision?

FROGGYJ
A+,N+,CST,CNCT,MCP

http://www.EdmontonSportRiderz.com

 

[pagy]

The best solution is one that meets the business requirements. Do you know what the business plans to do with the acquired company yet? How are they going to run that company? will they be incorporating them into the current business or keep them as a seperate identity? Does the acquired company have an IT department already and will they be involved at all? How will the new IT structure be administered, centrally, geographically?

Only when you know what is happening from a business perspective can you make the correct decision.
In the interim you can start preparing by looking at your available options though and how you would implement them if and when required.


All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
- Mark Twain

 

[FROGGYJ]

The company will run as a seperate entity and under their existing name. Our corporation has several companies within located in various geographical locations. From what I have been told thusfar is they don't really have an IT dept. They have a couple users which have grown with the company and have been performing all the IT related tasks up to this point. I'm just trying to be proactive, but will enter into meetings and discussions in a few weeks.

Currently our corp has 4 different companies all acting in their own entity, however all under 1 domain and managed by the corp IT dept. We have in the last year acquired 3 more companies and will be looking to merge them, so I'm trying to gauge whether it makes more sense to merge them all into our domain since we will be doing most the administration centrally, or start just moving their domains into our forest. Some companies are small with a couple dozen pc's which would be easy to promote to our domain, but what do you do when you have 100+ pcs's?

If it makes more sense to just move their domains into our forest....how is that done?

If it makes more sense to promote them to our domain, are there any tools out there to do this on a mass scale rather then physically walking to each machine?

FROGGYJ
A+,N+,CST,CNCT,MCP

http://www.EdmontonSportRiderz.com

 

[58sniper]

Based on what you've said, I'd say you're looking at creating trusts, then using the ADMT to move their objects into your forest. That could be a subdomain of your root, the root itself, etc.

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[pagy]

I agree with Pat. Perhaps use subdomains if you need to maintain some form of identity for the acquired company, IE
acuiredcompanyname.yourdomain.

Or use OUs

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
- Mark Twain

 

[FROGGYJ]

ok well what we are doing currently is seperating companies by OU's and it seems to work just fine. I have never had to performm such a merge, and I understand the ADMT tool will assist in moving user accounts, computer accounts etc....but I haven't read that much into it yet. How do you go about demoting everything from their domain name, and then promoting it to our domain name? I know dcpromo on the servers manually, but rather then visiting every workstation...there must be a simpler way?

FROGGYJ
A+,N+,CST,CNCT,MCP

http://www.EdmontonSportRiderz.com

 

[58sniper]

ADMT - it's the Microsoft way. That's what it's designed to do.

Active Directory Migration Tool v.2.0 Abstract

http://technet2.microsoft.com/Windo...376e-4fcd-9144-3f895c4bbb8e1033.mspx?mfr=true

Pat Richard, MCSE MCSA:Messaging CNA MVP
Want to know how email works? Read for yourself -

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

 

[FROGGYJ]

I noticed there is a ADMT v3.....what are your feelings using v2 or v3?

FROGGYJ
A+,N+,CST,CNCT,MCP

http://www.EdmontonSportRiderz.com

 

[FROGGYJ]

hrm can't edit posts...I forgot to mention we are mostly win2k3 servers with I think the odd 2000....and desktops are all XP.

FROGGYJ
A+,N+,CST,CNCT,MCP

http://www.EdmontonSportRiderz.com