JBoss, a long-rumored acquisition candidate, has purchased a German service partner to establish stronger footing in one of Europe's fastest growing markets for open-source software, the company said last week.

Objectone, which is located in Berlin, is a certified systems integrator and authorized JBoss service partner in Germany, selling JBoss subscription and support services to enterprises in the country, according to JBoss, of Atlanta, Georgia. The German company, which JBoss called its most successful partner in the country, will become JBoss Deutschland on March 1.

German companies are showing increasing interest in using the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite, or JEMS, in business-critical applications, according to Tobias Hartwig, current managing director of Objectone and designated head of JBoss Deutschland.

One of JBoss' larger German customers is the Norisbank, which had its origins in the German retail group Quelle.

Oracle Corp. has reportedly been in talks to buy JBoss but that deal has yet to materialize.

It's the latest in a series of acquisitions for JBoss. Most recently it acquired distributed transaction technologies from Hewlett-Packard and Arjuna Technologies, and the Drools project, an open source Java business rules engine.