My first question: Is what type of business or industry the company represents? Who will be the executive sponsor, the project architect, project manager? Will this person also be in charge of the Active Directory? What is the budget, time-frame and schedule of this project? Does the other company have an IT Administrator or are they using a consultant? If so, it would be more cost effective to hire an IT Administrator. What are the business needs of the company we are merging with?
Who is the WAN person responsible for the network? Have him/her provide a map of your current WAN network. What applications will be integrated in the AD/DS design? Will a variety of technologies, different levels of security and a global presence now or in the future be required? Where will all your data be stored? Will we be having geographically separate data rooms?
Who are the Active Directory Service and Data Owners? (Service owners include the forest owner, the AD/DNS owner, and the site topology owner. The Data Owners will include organizational unit Owners.
Will the other site have a Service Administrator or a Data Administrator? Because it is cost saving having Data Administrators. The Data Administrators are users within a Domain, who are responsible for both, maintaining data that is stored in the AD/DS i.e. user and group accounts and maintaining computers that are members of their domain.
Service Administrators require a much higher skill set because they are responsible for maintaining the directory and the infrastructure that supports it. Dividing work assignments result in cost savings because only a small number of administrators need to be trained to operate and maintain the entire directory and infrastructure.