Zayo woes

Tue Sep 19 14:52:10 UTC 2023

Except they've acquired A LOT of companies running C and A LOT of companies
running J, you'd think they'd at least have the same process for the
similar setups, but they don't.

Shane

On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 10:42 AM Matthew Petach <mpetach at netflight.com>
wrote:

>
>
> On Tue, Sep 19, 2023 at 7:19AM Mike Hammett <nanog at ics-il.net> wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> I've never understood companies that acquire and don't completely
>> integrate as quickly as they can.
>>
>
>
> Ah, spoken with the voice of someone who's never been in the position of:
> a) acquiring a company not-much-smaller-than-you that
> b) runs on completely different hardware and software and
> c) your executives have promised there will be cost savings after the
> merger due to "synergies" between the two companies.
> ^_^;
>
> Let's say you're an all J shop; your scripts, your tooling, everything
> expects to be talking to J devices.
>
> Your executives buy a company that has almost the same size network--but
> it's all C devices running classic IOS.
>
> You can go to your executives and tell them "hey, to integrate quickly
> with our network and tooling, we need to swap out all their C gear for J
> gear; it's gonna cost an extra $50M"
> The executives respond by pointing at c) above, and denying the request
> for money to convert the acquired network to J.
>
> You can go to your network and say "hey, we need to revamp our tooling and
> systems to understand how to speak to C and J devices equally, in spite of
> wildly different syntaxes for route-maps and the like-it's going to take 4
> more developer headcount to rewrite all the systems."
> The executives respond by pointing at c) above, and deny the request for
> developer headcount to rewrite your software systems.
>
> The general result of acquisitions of similar-sized companies is that the
> infrastructure runs in parallel, slowly getting converted over and unified
> as gear needs to be replaced, or sites are phased out--because any other
> course of action costs more money than the executives had promised the
> shareholders, the board, or the VCs, depending on what stage your company
> is at.
>
> Swift integrations cost money, and most acquisitions promise cost savings
> instead of warning of increased costs due to integration.
>
> That's why most companies don't integrate quickly.  :(
>
> Matt
>
>
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