Mergers & acquisitions

Red Hat Inc. will acquire JBoss Inc. of Atlanta in a $350 million cash and stock transaction, plus an additional $70 million contingent on achieving specific performance measures.Raleigh, N.C.-based Red Hat said it hopes that acquisition of the open-source middleware developer ? and an open-source platform on which to run Web applications ? will accelerate the shift to service-oriented architecture.Kenexa Corp. has acquired Knowledge Workers Inc., a Denver human resources and technology services company. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.Through the purchase, Kenexa of Wayne, Pa., will acquire expertise in staffing and human capital management, which it can use to break into the government sector, company officials said.SYS Technologies Inc. has acquired Reality Based IT Services Ltd., Laurel, Md., in a $9.5 million cash and stock deal.The buy strengthens the San Diego company's secure network solutions capabilities. The company plans to leverage RBIS' expertise in enhanced security features into its emergency response and video surveillance products.Business Objects Inc. has closed its acquisition $69 million in cash of privately held enterprise data quality software and services provider FirstLogic Inc., La Crosse, Mich.Adding data quality tools to its enterprise information management software lets users generate reliable information for use in enterprise business intelligence and performance management deployments, San Jose, Calif.-based Business Objects said.