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HPE Acquires SGI For $275 Million (venturebeat.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced today that it has acquired SGI for $275 million in cash and debt. VentureBeat provides some backstory on the company that makes servers, storage, and software for high-end computing: "SGI (originally known as Silicon Graphics) was cofounded in 1981 by Jim Clark, who later cofounded Netscape with Marc Andreessen. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 after being de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange. In 2009 it was acquired by Rackable Systems, which later adopted the SGI branding. SGI's former campus in Mountain View, California, is now the site of the Googleplex. SGI, which is now based in Milpitas, California, brought in $533 million in revenue in its 2016 fiscal year and has 1,100 employees, according to the statement. HPE thinks buying SGI will be neutral in terms of its financial impact in the year after the deal is closed, which should happen in the first quarter of HPE's 2017 fiscal year, and later a catalyst for growth." HP split into two separate companies last year, betting that the smaller parts will be nimbler and more able to reverse four years of declining sales.
I worked for SGI in mtn view a few years before their demise.
one of the funnest places I was ever at. such a shame to see them go. even worse to think that google (puke!) took their campus over and its now run by ad-men, so to speak.
not to mention that traffic around shoreline area is a nightmare, all the way up rt 101 for several miles. thanks again, google ;(
sgi had class and created some stellar products. sadly, they went down a dark side with the WBT project (internally called 'wintel box thing' their x86 systems running modified NT and no BIOS).
but wow, working at sgi was so much fun. silicon valley used to be cool. now, its a fucking sweat shop for h1b's and 'social media' companies (double puke).
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
> HP, the destroyer of worlds,
Actually it is more like this old joke:
Q. How do you known when a tech company is no longer valuable?
A. When HP buys it.
*ba dum tsh*
For of those in need of an SGI history lesson, the SGI currently in business is not quite the same SGI (Silicon Graphics) of old. Remember that Rackable Systems acquired Silicon Graphics back in 2009 for like $20M I think? And they turned around and renamed Rackable to SGI.
Karma: Bad
I was working for SGI as a co-op when that Pentium 4 thing came out. We got a demo unit and I was pretty disappointed. The flatscreen monitor they shipped with it was way more exciting even if it experienced epic tearing when we played the demo video. It's the only PC I ever used that has RAMBUS memory.
We did have one guy come down and give a demo of Maya (or maybe it was Alias Wavefront at that point? I can't remember) and being amazed at how the demo guy could build and animate an entire scene in about an hour, even though the interface appeared to be 100% black magic. IIRC he had a spaceship he had built from a box flying around a city he built fighting a dinosaur he pulled out of some asset library.
I read the internet for the articles.