Mergers and VDR

It's not uncommon for people to lose their jobs when a merger between two companies occur. From a business standpoint, it makes sense to consolidate some jobs. But management should think hard and long before making decisions to cut staff in some areas, particularly when it comes to Virtual Data Rooms. Here are some of the issues that I see:

1) Different companies probably have different levels of security. Staff members of both IT departments should compare every level of security. For example, it's a well-known fact that banks own shares in each other, as do insurance companies. Let's say that a regional bank merges into another regional bank. The bank with the more advanced IT security may or may not be the one that swallowed the other one. If its IT security is vulnerable, there could be a major problem because often computer systems are changed.

2) Software requires licenses. In an effort to save additional costs, the dominant company may not want to spend money upgrading security or buying additional licenses for software.

3) No one really knows what's going to happen once Obamacare takes effect. The president has talked about having all medical records go digital, but the truth is that hospital computer systems are often incompatible with each other. In addition, many doctors are reluctant to go digital because of the cost and the fact that there is no standard, like Microsoft Office for administrative office work.

Most lawyers use MS, but there are some that still use WordPerfect. If two lawyers can't send each other documents that are readable by their systems, imagine what it would it be like if two financial or insurance firms merged and their security was incompatible. It's an invitation to a security disaster.

Right now I'm doing some research on ShareVault, a leader in Virtual Data Room products. Supposedly, the company has the experience of handling billions of dollars in transactions. If anyone has experience in it, please contact me and let me know your thoughts.