HP has hired a retired US Navy vice admiral who spent decades in one of the branches of the US military to help with HP's infrastructure services to the Department of Defense's war-fighting missions.

H. Denby Starling II joins HP as VP for command and control at the company's Infrastructure Services division after more than 30 years in the Navy. His task will be integrating command and control disciplines he's been immersed in during his public-service career into the infrastructure design and operation services his new employer provides to the DoD.

Doug Davis, VP of the US Public Sector DoD market segment at HP and Starling's new boss, said Starling would ensure that HP services would "support and enhance" war fighting missions of the defense department.

"Denby's extensive experience with the U.S. Navy, including cyber and network-centric warfare, makes him an ideal leader for the command and control aspects of our DoD infrastructure services work," Davis said.

Starling's most recent job with the Navy was to command Navy Cyber Forces and Naval Network Warfare Command. His duties included supervision of conduct of Navy network and space operations.

During his Navy career he has been designated as a naval flight officer and as a naval aviator. He has been an attack pilot and has commanded a nuclear aircraft carrier.

These are turbulent times for all those involved with infrastructure of the US federal government and especially those involved with the DoD infrastructure. The department has more data centers than any other federal agency and the White House expects it to shut down more than 300 of them within the next four years.

Under his government-wide data center consolidation plan, federal CIO Vivek Kundra has proposed for the defense department to shrink its data center footprint from the current 772 facilities down to 426 by 2015.