Comments on: IBM Buys Transitive

By: Massimo Re Ferre'

Massimo Re Ferre' — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:05:54 +0000

http://go.theregister.com/news/http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/25/ibm_transitive_options/

Good summary.

Massimo.

By: Mike DiPetrillo

Mike DiPetrillo — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:38:48 +0000

This just in from a contact at IBM. I was looking for some clarification on what the existing Transitive-IBM relationship was. This adds some good insight.

PowerVM is the virtualization feature for IBM POWER-based hw (Guests supported: i (aka OS/400) + AIX + Linux for Power).

PowerVM comes with different SKUs depending on the features you want to enable. One of these features (which I am told it’s included in ANY PowerVM SKUs) is Lx86.

Lx86 is indeed the Transitive product so Transitive sw doesn’t run on top of Lx86 … it’s the same thing.

By: Mike DiPetrillo

Mike DiPetrillo — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 16:01:46 +0000

Thanks, Massimo. I think that’s exactly where the two are merging in the IBM world. According to the press release:

“Transitive technology is currently included as part of the IBM PowerVMTM software designed to help customers consolidate their x86 Linux workloads onto IBM Systems.”

Maybe you can help shed more light there. If you do find out more please let us know. Thanks.

By: Massimo Re Ferre'

Massimo Re Ferre' — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:54:00 +0000

>Of course in order to do this you’ll need IFLs on your IBM mainframe and enablement licenses

Mike, for the records, I don’t think Transitive technologies allows SPARC applications to run on mainframes. You might be confusing platforms here. We did work with Parallels to develop PowerVM Lx86 .. which is an emulation environment that allows non-POWER applications to run on POWER based hardware (not mainframes).

That’s what we have been doing in the past, I don’t have any inside about what we are going to do with it.

Massimo.