Hitachi Data Systems Federal picks up Brocade assets, employees

Hitachi Data Systems Federal said this week it has signed an agreement with Brocade to take over Brocade U.S. Federal contracts and employees.

Under the deal, set to close when Broadcom completes its acquisition of Brocade, HDS Federal will grow its cleared employee workforce. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“HDS Federal will gain the Brocade assets and contracts for cleared data center networking, campus/edge networking, and Storage Area Networking (SAN) service maintenance,” HDS Federal said in its announcement. “The agreement supports HDS Federal’s transformation strategy to broaden its portfolio of federal offerings to support complex intelligence and engineering solutions for its customers.”

David Turner, chief executive of HDS Federal, told Inside Defense this week his company, which is a subsidiary of Hitachi focused on the U.S. federal government market, is seeking to become an “end-to-end data services company.”

“This fills a hole for us,” he said.

Under the deal, HDS Federal hires about two dozen of Brocade's employees, almost all of whom are working on-site at defense and intelligence agency locations, Turner said.

Having employees on site “we have found to be very important,” Turner said. “We don't want to have an arms-length relationship with our clients.”