IBM Buys Transitive, Puts Processor Virtualisation In The Limelight

In a bid to snare significant share in virtualisation market, IBM announced it snapped up Transitive Corp., a Los Gatos, California-based company, which specialises in cross-platform virtualisation technology.

IBM said that the technology from Transitive, for which it already won 48 patents, will help it in consolidating the Linux-based applications from under-utilized servers onto IBM systems.

Transitive’s technology can help businesses by transitioning server applications from open source environments to proprietary UNIX environment, or vice versa, without any notable modifications in applications, IBM added.

IBM further asserted that the agreement would boost its capability to provide products that help its customers in maximizing productivity and competence in their data centres.

IBM has been working with Transitive Corp. since January, using company’s technology as a part of its PowerVM Lx86 application, a solution for operating Linux/x86 applications without change on IBM’s p servers.

The financial terms of the deal aren’t revealed yet, and it is expected to materialise in December this year.

Transitive received the much yearned recognition in 2006, when Apple released a software called Rosetta, developed by Transitive, in the wake of Apple’s switch from PowerPC to Intel chips.

Incidentally after the Apple switch, Transitive penned deals with prominent server makers, including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, and Sun Microsystems.