The challenge

M&A data preservation is fundamentally different from legacy retirement.

Every acquisition contract specifies data preservation and transfer obligations, often governed by a Transition Services Agreement (TSA) with hard timelines and service-level commitments. The acquiring organization inherits unfamiliar systems, unfamiliar data models, and the regulatory obligations attached to the acquired company's data — all while under pressure to decommission the acquired infrastructure to realize cost synergies.

Divestitures are the mirror image. Carving out exactly the right data — everything that belongs to the divested entity, and nothing that doesn't — requires deep understanding of an entangled enterprise data landscape. Shared customers, intercompany transactions, cross-functional workflows are interleaved throughout the production systems.

Both sides of the M&A transaction need the same capabilities: rapid ingestion or extraction, governed preservation, AI-activated discovery of unfamiliar data, and a clear path to making the data accessible to the right stakeholders on the other side of the deal.

M&A-specific challenges

Unfamiliar systems — no institutional knowledge of the acquired company's data models.
TSA timelines — contract-driven deadlines for data transfer and infrastructure shutdown.
Volume and variety — dozens of applications across multiple business functions.
Compliance continuity — inherited regulatory obligations across multiple jurisdictions.
Data entanglement — for divestitures, the right data must be separated from the wrong data, precisely.
The "dark data" problem — much of the data is unclassified, unowned, and undocumented.

Buy side and sell side

Solix handles both sides of every deal.

Buy Side — Acquisition Data Ingestion

The acquired company's data extraction team prepares structured extracts — ERP, CRM, HR, supply chain, custom applications. Solix ingests the extracts directly into the governed Preservation Zone, validates completeness and integrity, and builds Application Knowledge Graphs that make the unfamiliar data immediately queryable through natural-language access via Data Ask.

Outcome: the acquiring company decommissions the acquired infrastructure on TSA schedule, realizes cost synergies, and retains full audit-ready access to historical data — even from systems they have never used.

Sell Side — Divestiture & Spin-Off Carve-Outs

Solix Intelligent Classification analyzes the full enterprise data estate and identifies data assets associated with the divested entity — by division, product line, brand, customer segment, or geography. Governed data sets are created in the Preservation Zone, ready for transfer to the acquiring party. AI-driven discovery accelerates carve-out while ensuring completeness and accuracy.

Outcome: divestiture timelines compress from months to weeks. Audit-defensible carve-outs. Nothing missed. Nothing improperly transferred.

The workflow

The same engine. Both sides. Every deal.

Connect

Solix Connect ingests data extracts from the acquired company's source environments — mainframe, packaged ERP, custom, SaaS — or extracts the right data sets from the divesting company's enterprise systems with precision.

Migrate & Validate

Data lands in a governed Preservation Zone. Automated quality checks validate completeness and structural integrity. Retention management, legal hold, and inherited regulatory obligations enforced from day one.

Enable AI Access

Pre-built Application Knowledge Graphs for major enterprise systems. Agentic AKG construction via Solix Data Sense for custom and bespoke applications. Business users query the acquired or carved-out data through Data Ask in natural language — without ever needing to learn the source system.

A working scenario

"We just acquired a mid-sized manufacturer. Their ERP, HR, and supply-chain data is now ours."

The acquired company prepares data extracts. Solix ingests them, validates, and builds Knowledge Graphs in weeks — leveraging pre-built accelerators for major enterprise applications and Data Sense Builder for the custom manufacturing systems. Within a quarter, the acquiring company's finance team is asking questions like "What were the top 20 customers by revenue for the acquired company in fiscal year 2024?" and getting accurate answers — from systems they have never used. The acquired infrastructure is decommissioned on schedule. Cost synergies are realized immediately.

Need help on an active deal?

Professional Services with deep M&A integration and divestiture experience. 20 years of services depth across acquisition data ingestion, TSA-timeline management, and divestiture carve-outs.

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Where does the data live?

SolixCloud Preservation Zone — multi-tenant, single-tenant, on-premises, or hybrid. SOC 2 + ISO 27001. Multi-jurisdictional residency.

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Solutions · Use Case · M&A Data Preservation

One engine. Both sides of the deal.