Technology is more important than ever to the merger and acquisition (M&A) process. For many firms, IT is a top driver of deals, but it can also be a sticking point.

In its “Corporate M&A Report 2020,” Bain warns of the challenges posed by IT integration: “In a tech-enabled world, deal scrutiny is expanding to include issues such as data ownership and access to critical technology, often prompted by national interests, as well as the impact on future competition. The time, complexity and the resources to get deals over the regulatory hurdle are rising — it will take longer than you think and cost more than you expect.”

It’s essential for organizations to prepare for the integration process and enter it with their eyes open. These four types of technology tools can help to streamline IT integration.

Due to various factors such as cost-efficiency, flexibility and availability, organizations are trying to leverage the infrastructure from various cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, Google and IBM. Within the CDW cloud practice, we are finding that organizations are taking different paths. Some organizations are in an early experimental stage as they try to understand the various capabilities provided by the cloud, while other customers are fully operating in the cloud.

This isn’t a new TV show — it’s a rerun. Delivering IT services over a network is not new, nor is combining computing power to serve clients. It’s just being done better: it’s more economical, secure and manageable than ever before via cloud Software as a Service (SaaS).