Less than a year into my role as VP of IT at Digirad, and we’ve already hit our first major M&A milestone: Digirad has officially closed the sale of DMS Health Technologies.
DMS, based in Fargo, North Dakota, has been a longstanding part of our business – and I’ve spent my fair share of time out there. My first trip to Fargo was back in March 2019, when I was still consulting, prepping their on-prem datacenter for a move to the cloud. The push was urgent – their office relocation depended on us getting all the servers powered down and moved into Azure.
My most recent trip was just a few weeks ago, helping wrap up the closure of that same original office. As much as I’ve enjoyed working with the DMS team (and I truly have), I’ll admit I won’t miss braving North Dakota winters.
From Cloud Consolidation to Strategic Separation
When we initially migrated to Azure, we were operating under clear direction from the board: treat Digirad and DMS as one unified organization. So we consolidated both companies into:
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A single Azure environment
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A shared O365 tenant with two branded email domains
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Two separate Windows domains linked by a trust relationship
This worked fine – until it didn’t.
When the DMS sale was finalized, we suddenly had to untangle everything. And this wasn’t just a technical challenge – it was operational, cultural, and logistical. Files were shared, systems were intertwined, and responsibilities were blurred. It became a full-scale disentanglement effort, and the timeline was tight.
The Separation Process
To get it done, we tackled the project in phases:
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New Azure Tenant Creation
We spun up a brand-new Azure environment for Digirad to start fresh – giving us a clean slate to implement the best practices we’ve learned along the way. -
Office 365 Migration with Quest
We used Quest O365 migration tools to split users and resources, recreating mailboxes, SharePoint libraries, and OneDrive structures in the new tenant. -
File System Realignment
We moved file systems using a mix of DFS, Azure disk replication, and some good old-fashioned rsync. -
Domain & Network Refresh
We stood up new domain controllers, created clean segmentation using Fortigate firewalls, and isolated all public-facing infrastructure using Read-Only Domain Controllers (RODCs). -
Modernization Opportunities
The separation gave us a chance to modernize our environment:-
File shares moved into Azure Blobs or SharePoint, depending on usage
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SaaS tools were isolated behind dedicated interfaces
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Network traffic was segmented with granular rules
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By the end of the project, Digirad had a fully independent and secure environment, and all relevant data had been purged from the DMS systems.
Lessons in Real-World M&A IT
If there’s one thing this experience underscored, it’s this:
IT isn’t just a supporting function in M&A – it’s a critical enabler.
Without the groundwork we laid early in the year – migrating systems, retiring old infrastructure, moving into Azure – none of this would’ve been possible on deadline.
Even so, this was a heavy lift, and one we had to execute quickly, cleanly, and with no room for error. I’m proud of the team for making it happen – and for turning a surprise sale into a structured, successful transition.
Now that the dust has settled, I’m even more confident in Digirad’s ability to scale – and in IT’s role as a driver of that evolution.
– Vince