We Can Help You With:
Know exactly what you are buying -- before you sign.
Acquisitions live or die on the technology underneath. A polished product demo can mask years of accumulated technical debt, fragile infrastructure, security gaps, and an architecture that will not survive the growth your investment thesis depends on. Desert Willow provides independent technical due diligence that cuts through the surface and examines the entire stack -- code, cloud infrastructure, security, QA, monitoring, DevOps, and team processes -- so you close with confidence, not surprises.
Our assessments are conducted by engineers who have architected and shipped production platforms in some of the most demanding verticals -- payment processing, healthcare, mobile, and transportation -- not by analysts reading from a checklist. We know what good looks like because we have built it.
Full-Stack Visibility, No Blind Spots
We assess the entire technology stack top to bottom: application code, architecture, cloud and server infrastructure, databases, QA processes, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring, and security posture. Nothing is out of scope.
Technical Risk Quantified Before Close
Uncover hidden technical debt, architectural limitations, security vulnerabilities, and scalability ceilings before they become your problem. Our findings translate directly into deal terms, pricing adjustments, or integration plans.
Informed by Real Platform-Building Experience
Our assessments are conducted by engineers who have architected and shipped production platforms -- not just audited them. We know what good looks like because we have built it, across payments, healthcare, geolocation, and transportation.
Speed Without Sacrificing Depth
M&A timelines are tight. We deliver thorough, actionable assessments within deal timescales -- typically two to four weeks -- without cutting corners on the analysis.
Clear, Executive-Ready Reporting
Technical findings are translated into business impact: what works, what does not, what it will cost to fix, and what risks remain. Reports are designed for boardrooms, not just engineering teams.
Post-Acquisition Integration Roadmap
Diligence does not end at the report. We deliver a prioritized remediation and integration plan so your engineering team knows exactly what to tackle on day one after close.
Deep review of application source code, system architecture, design patterns, and technical debt. We evaluate code quality, maintainability, test coverage, and whether the architecture can support the growth the acquisition thesis assumes.
Assessment of cloud or on-premises infrastructure: hosting architecture, networking, scalability configuration, disaster recovery, cost efficiency, and vendor dependencies. We identify what scales, what breaks, and what costs more than it should.
Evaluation of the target's security posture including vulnerability assessment, access controls, encryption practices, incident response readiness, and compliance with relevant standards -- PCI DSS, HIPAA, SOC 2, GDPR. We surface the risks that could become liabilities.
Assessment of testing strategy, automation coverage, regression processes, and release quality. We determine whether the team's QA practices will sustain product quality through the transition and beyond.
Evaluation of build, deployment, and release processes: pipeline reliability, deployment frequency, rollback capability, environment management, and infrastructure-as-code maturity.
Review of logging, alerting, APM, and on-call practices. We assess whether the team can detect, diagnose, and resolve production issues quickly -- or whether outages will become your problem post-acquisition.
Evaluation of engineering team structure, development methodology, documentation practices, and knowledge concentration risk. We identify key-person dependencies and process gaps that could impact post-acquisition continuity.
We do not just flag technical debt -- we estimate the cost and timeline to remediate it. This gives you concrete numbers for deal negotiation and a prioritized action plan for post-close integration.
A technology acquisition is only as sound as the technology being acquired. We give investors, acquirers, and boards the unvarnished technical truth — what works, what does not, what it will cost to fix — so the deal is priced on reality, not assumptions.
Michael ArnerCEO & Founder - Desert Willow Digital Architectures