Mergers in the public sector have been gaining importance for years. Many motives—not least budgetary reasons—suggest that it is worth considering whether each local authority really needs to handle its IT tasks independently and maintain its IT resources in its own organizations; a cooperative solution that crosses municipal and even state borders appears to be an attractive alternative. However, achieving such collaboration is not easy due to numerous restrictions and challenges; the currently low number of successful mergers speaks for itself. The authors of this volume focus on a recognized success story: the merger of the data centers of Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, which, under the name Dataport, now also includes other states and municipalities. They examine the individual stages of the process—from initiation through to...