JBoss Program Takes Partners To Another Level

The JBoss Certified Partner Program includes four partner designations: JBoss Certified Solution Partners, JBoss Certified Technology Partners, JBoss Certified Systems Integrators and JBoss Authorized Service Partners.

The program emphasizes trained personnel and certifications for mission-critical applications, JBoss executives said. To date, JBoss has lined up roughly 70 partners, many of which are ISVs and large systems integrators.

Tom Cooper, vice president of worldwide channels at JBoss, said JBoss will work with pure-play services companies. RazorThink, Tripod Technologies and Amentra, for example, have signed up.

"JBoss is not in the business of providing consulting, implementation and integration services; we rely on our certified partners to provide that to the end customer," he said. "We enable our partners to provide these services by training their personnel and supporting them technically on the back end. Our business model is based on deriving our revenue from training and support services."

The JBoss Certified Solution Partners tier enables ISVs to certify their applications on JBoss' application server and on the JBoss Enterprise Middleware System.

JBoss Certified Technology Partners are ISVs that embed the JBoss application server and software stack into their applications.

Another tier, JBoss Certified Systems Integrators, stresses certification for service personnel and product support for systems integrators, consultants and migration companies. Finally, the JBoss Authorized Service Partners level is earmarked for partners that want to resell JBoss-branded support and training.