Transitive - the king of server software promiscuity - has signed on with Hitachi America to move Solaris/SPARC software over to x86- and Itanium-based servers.

The Hitachi deal includes a sales and marketing angle. So, the vendors will team to push Transitive's QuickTransit software at you in tandem with Hitachi's BladeSymphony boxes. Customers can move Solaris/SPARC software over to Linux/x86 gear and now also to Linux/Itanium hardware without any source code tweaks or binaries modifications.

Transitive has arranged similar partnerships with just about any partner it can find. HP, for example, already has deals in place to shift Solaris/SPARC customers over to its x86 and Itanium hardware. Sun works with Transitive to shuffle customers using older versions of Solaris onto new SPARC hardware or x86 systems. And Fujitsu signed a recent deal to move Solaris/SPARC software onto its panopoly of hardware, including x86/Linux, x86/Solaris and Itanium/Linux systems.

The software vendor, however, may be best known for crafting the Rosetta software that lets code made for PowerPC chips run on Intel-based Apple computers.

Transitive recently retooled (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/27/transitive_three_products/) its product portfolio, splitting its software into three distinct categories. Customers can go after a Legacy product aimed at the older Solaris operating system set or Workstation and Server products for newer OSes and applications. ®

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