In an announcement, Blue Bell, Pa.-based Unisys said the deal is part of its efforts to provide open-source products and open standards to enterprise customers.

'Having the relationship with JBoss is something our clients look at and feel comfortable with,' said Anthony Gold, vice president and general manager for Unisys' open-source business. The previous partnership deal with Atlanta-based JBoss only focused on providing service and support for the company's JBoss Application Server, including Level 1 and Level 2 support, Gold said. The new deal allows Unisys to sell and support all JBoss products for all Unisys and non-Unisys hardware platforms and for use with Linux or Windows operating systems on a global basis, and to offer Unisys-branded training.

The integration by JBoss of the JEMS middleware stack with its application server offerings helped push Unisys to expand its partnership because the integration brings additional value for Unisys customers, Gold said.

The new agreement covers all of the JEMS components, including JBoss Application Server, Hibernate, Apache Tomcat, JBoss Rules, JBoss Transactions, JBoss Cache and JBoss Portal.

JEMS fits well with Unisys' open Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) strategies, Gold said, to help customers better manage their IT infrastructures.