IBM is going to buy Transitive, the British cross-platform virtualization firm that salvaged legacy Macintosh programs and made Apple's move from IBM to Intel chips as graceful as a prima ballerina's pirouette.

Transitive is clever at running applications written for one kind of microprocessor and operating system on multiple platforms with little or no modification and could probably be made to run all legacy apps in virtualized form on a single hardware platform.

Aside from Apple's Rosetta technology, Transitive has also helped move SGI from Mips to Itanium as well Spark/Solaris to Intel/Linux.

IBM said it wanted the operation so users can consolidate Linux applications onto the IBM systems. Transitive can already put x86 apps on IBM's Power-based AIX and Linux servers and is productized as IBM's PowerVM software.

IBM didn't say how much it's paying, but Transitive's B and C rounds totaled $21.5 million, which it got from Accel Partners, Pond Ventures and Crescendo Ventures. It has some 48 patents.