Unisys is the latest high-profile technology firm to partner with Red Hat for enterprise Linux product offerings.

Red Hat said Unisys would offer its enterprise offerings across Unisys server lines. Unisys service personnel will be trained to offer support.

The partnership includes joint marketing, customer support, development of open source applications, training and dedicated engineering personnel.

The news helped give Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT) a boost today. Prices were up 39 cents, or 3 percent, to $13.33 in early trading.

“CIOs are increasingly looking to standardize their data center environments on Intel platforms and move away from expensive, proprietary Unix/RISC-based systems,” said Chander Khanna, vice president of Unisys platform marketing, in a statement. “As the acknowledged leader in the delivery of high-end Intel solutions, Unisys is ideally suited to capitalize on new opportunities within the growing number of organizations selecting Red Hat Linux. Working with Red Hat, Unisys will help customers create flexible and robust Linux-based solutions designed to meet their specific needs – it’s a giant leap forward in developing a mission-critical ecosystem around the Linux operating environment.”

Other Red Hat partners include IBM, HP, Dell, Fujitsu, NEC, Hitachi, Intel and Oracle.

Red Hat also announced Tuesday that it is adding new security features in its latest Enterprise Linux update.

The modifications had been planned for release for 2005. Updates are available to Enterprise Linux subscribers.

“The open source development model coupled with the subscription business model creates a unique combination for customers in that features, upgrades and updates are delivered in real-time,” said Brian Stevens, vice president of Operating Systems Development at Red Hat. “Rapid innovation with consistent delivery means that customers are able to benefit from performance gains and security enhancements as they become available.”

Enterprise Linux 3 was released last fall.

According to Red Hat, the new security features are:

  • Exec-shield and PIE (Position Independent Executable) features, which provide protection against stack, buffer or function pointer overflows, and against other types of security exploits that rely on overwriting data structures in memory.

  • NX (No Execute) support has been extended from the Intel(R) Itanium(R)2 processor to include Intel(R) x86, Intel(R) EM64T and AMD64 processors. NX technology restricts execution of program code in specific areas of memory such as the stack or the heap, preventing many common buffer overflow security vulnerabilities.

    • “These features further enhance the security of Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, significantly reducing the ability of hackers to trigger the execution of compromising code,” the company said.

    Red Hat: www.redhat.com