It’s the acquisition that seems like it’ll never close. Slowly but surely Broadcom is getting closer to officially buying Brocade. The latest hurdle was regulatory. Broadcom and the Federal Trade Commission finally came to an agreement that would allow the federal agency to allow the deal to go through. The agreement settles the issue of Broadcom supplying chips to, and now competing with, Cisco after the acquisition.
As part of the deal, Broadcom will “firewall” off a chip-making unit to work solely with Cisco as a customer. This will have IT systems, facilities, and security procedures from anything that comes remotely close to touching the Brocade side of the business. Understandably, Cisco is worried about losing trade secret after the acquisition goes through.
On top of this, the FTC will appoint someone to monitor Broadcom for five years to make sure they’re in compliance, with the option by the FTC to expand this another five. So be on the lookout for “Broadcom FTC narc” job listings in the near future.
