AT&T has completed the acquisition of Vyatta

AT&T has completed its previously announced acquisition of the Vyatt network operating system and associated assets of Brocade Communications Systems. The deal also included the hiring of several dozen Brocade employees.

“Just as important as the Vyatta network operating system and other technology assets are the developers and other staff joining AT&T as part of the deal,” said Chris Rice, senior vice president, AT&T Labs. “They have valuable skills and experience that will complement and drive our ongoing network transformation. We’re excited to have them on the AT&T team.”

The Brocade employees joining AT&T are mostly located in California and the U.K.

“The Vyatta team has always enjoyed a close working relationship with AT&T on its network transformation initiative,” said Robert Bays, former vice president of software engineering at Brocade, who is also joining AT&T as part of the deal. “We’re delighted to be able to continue to work with AT&T to deliver on its vision.”

“The Vyatta team brings expertise in routing technologies, distributed systems, network virtualization, and software-defined services,” said John Medamana, vice president of Packet & Optical Networks at AT&T. “These are valuable skills. And they will help us evolve our network infrastructure and services.”

AT&T expects to virtualize and software-control 75% of its network by 2020. AT&T plans to hit 55% by the end of 2017. A key part of that plan is hiring employees and training current staff in software-defined networking, security, data analytics and other new technologies.