At the VERY LEAST, you need to port the Aries emulator to the x86 platform. Aries needs to expand in scope to execute Itanium-specific binaries on x86.
The OS-wrapper for this is irrelevant, as long as sufficient RAS features are present.
If you truly want to reassure your customer base that you will not abandon us, then it would also be wise to approach BOTH Intel and AMD for x86 instruction-set modifications to optimize the performance of Aries. At this point, it might also be wise to consider the Alpha. The bigger the tent, the happier your customers will be.
Should you choose to do this in Linux and the kernel maintainers accept it, you might consider initiating a broader emulation subsystem, perhaps addressing POWER and SPARC. IBM Transitive (Rosetta) is the (stagnant) market leader, but the benefits to you of GPL emulators for the "Boutique" platforms of your competetors are obvious: you are the x86 server market leader; their lunch is yours to eat.
Here is an example of Aries on Itanium, running a PA-RISC binary from HP-UX 10.20. It is quiet, transparent, and impressive.
# file /bin/ls
/bin/ls: ELF-32 executable object file - IA64
# file /usr/local/bin/gls
/usr/local/bin/gls: PA-RISC1.1 shared executable dynamically linked dynamically linked
# ./gls
/usr/lib/dld.sl: Can't open shared library: /usr/local/lib/libintl.sl.2
/usr/lib/dld.sl: No such file or directory
ARIES32: Core file for PA32 application saved to /usr/local/bin/core.gls
Abort(coredump)
# cd ../lib
# scp foo@bar:/usr/local/lib/libintl.sl.2 .
foo@bar's password:
libintl.sl.2 100% 48KB 48.2KB/s 00:00
# cd ../bin
# ./gls
...