Ok I know many of us experienced this kind of trip once in a lifetime.
I have travelled acquisition a lot of times, when mondadori informatica was absorbed by the mother comany mondadori, when brightmail become part of symantec, when symantec acquired veritas software and moved all european management to veritas, and at the end when cisco systems acquired Ironport.
All acquisitions means change and most of the changes are not well accepted, but I’m a long traveller on the seas of IT company and I’m quite used to changes so what has meant to me an acquisition?
The last the better, They use to say, and so I will talk about my experience from IronPort to Cisco, it will be useful to me to analyze what have happened and what means to me.
Chapter one: I used to be happy
Geez guy life in a succesfful startup is great.
I know lot of work and respnsability, but there is a sense of team, a common vision that ispire and drive us towards results.
Usually managers and company expert use to say that a company is made by it’s people, well it is not the truth for big groups, where roles are usually overtaking the human part, but it is the truth for startup.
For the good or for the bed we’re on the same ship, take risk together and win or loose together. Ok better spirit when you win that when you loose of course. 😉
It was amazing working in IronPort, people was nice and supportive, and they give you that strange feeling like you can make a difference. Sometimes you have had something to complain (who does not) but at the end the humanity was very satisfactory…. And I have had a lot of fun and success.
One of the reason was the product, the email security appliance from IronPort was and it is still now the state of the art in this kind of tecnoogy, the other was the team: Domenico wasis a sales war machine, the partner were so focused and the comany were listening customer needs and react prompty to customer needs and market changes.
Very very good indeed, a strong team, a strong company a strong product: goals were accomplished and overachievement was “easy”.
Lot of work, and was all in one, technical, consulting, sales, marketing, pre and post sales. Fun fun and fun. 🙂
