Earlier this week, Jacobs Engineering Group, Inc. announced that it will be acquiring the Federal Network System (FNS). The FNS is currently a 750 person unit owned by Verizon (News - Alert) Communications. FNS delivers reliability and comprehensive lifecycle support to the Intelligence Community (IC), Department of Defense (DoD), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, NASA and the Departments of Energy and Treasury.

Due to the fact that FNS is Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) compliant, government customers are guaranteed that delivered solutions will meet required cost accounting standards, which is something that these divisions absolutely need.

Because FNS can evaluate, plan, design, build, integrate, operate, manage, as well as maintain, it provides a comprehensive communications, IT, and security solutions package The FNS portfolio includes:

• World class systems integration
• Managed global networking solutions (secure voice, data and video)
• Secure mobile enterprise solutions
• Advanced enterprise voice communications
• Enterprise IT services and solutions
• All-distance voice services
• Convergent network solutions
• Continuity of Operations (COOP)

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. is an international engineering, architecture and construction firm with offices located around the world. In 2010, Jacobs was named by Forbes as one of America's 100 Most Trustworthy Companies.

There are still a lot of details that need to be worked out so we are not expecting to see the completion of this transaction until sometime during the summer. The financial terms of the agreement between these two companies has not been disclosed.

Robert Norfleet, vice president at Jacobs Group, said “We expect our acquisition of FNS to significantly enhance our capability in the growing intelligence community industry; allowing us to augment our service offerings to government clients for whom we currently provide mission critical operations, facility design, commissioning and technical services. We are very pleased to enter into this agreement with the goal of bringing FNS into Jacobs.”

Verizon acquired FNS as part of the merger between Bell Atlantic and GTE. It was this merger that actually created the communications giant back in 2000. The move seems to reflect a new focus for Verizon as it looks on the core enterprise business it has been building with its own telecommunications offerings in wireless and broadband.

According to Mike Maiorana, senior vice president of sales for Verizon enterprise solutions' public sector division, "Verizon has a vibrant and growing public sector business that we've never been more committed to serving. The strategic services, the enterprise grade services that we're focused on to strengthen our agencies' business like global IP, cloud, security, networks, wireless, machine to machine – these are all growth and investment areas within Verizon."

The 750 FNS employees are all expected to move to Jacobs once the acquisition is completed. The deal positions the firm in such a way that it can integrate classified communications systems and support into their architectural and engineering operations.