I have been hearing rumblings lately that IBM has stopped direct sales of the Transitive Solaris SPARC Binary Translator solution the purchased late last year. (see IBM Virtualizes Sun Out of Market).  This is a rather curious move.  While it sounds like it was the OEM division of IBM that drove the acquisition of Transitive (IBM OEM’d the product), it is strange that people who want to spend money on the solution are being turned away.

I tried to find which product within IBM’s vast portfolio of products included the Transitive solution, but I wasn’t able to.  I’m assuming that their own OEM’s version is still available to customers, but I’m also assuming that it’s not a straight OEM but embedded in some larger solution and thus has a higher price point that the Transitive stand-alone solution.

I was really expecting IBM to leverage this aquisition to help put a stake in Sun’s heart.  Maybe they are being a bit more stealthy in their attack and are going to leverage the binary translation technology to go after more than just Sun…time will tell.

Until then, customers who wanted to leverage Transitive to quickly get rid of their SPARC servers will have to take the long road.