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SGI to drop Irix for Linux
bpdlr (who admits
to being a PC Week writer) sent us a story that proclaims that
SGI Will Drop IRIX
in exchange for some little no-name penguin oriented OS that nobody
has heard of. I'm hearing rumors of a new Linux based mega server
coming out of SGI, as well as some hugely scalable systems. Interesting stuff.
- Do you make your money off of hardware, support, consulting, and add-on software, or on your proprietary OS?
- Are there unique strengths your company has? (IBM=global enterprise services, SGI=visualization, Sun=network is the computer)
- In the short or medium term, are you shifting to an Intel hardware strategy (ia32, ia64)? (SGI, HP, IBM?)
- In the short term, can you live with less than enterprise level? (SGI)
Why spend oodles of money developing the OS whose only function is to create a market for your hardware, services, unique value, if you can spend less money developing those features into Linux? In the final analysis, your competitive strength is not your OS (especially SGI, IBM, HP; Sun seems to be more tied to Solaris), and it is defocusing to pretend that the OS does anything more than help you get into the market where you strengths show.The problem for the moment for IBM, Sun, HP, is that Linux is seen mostly as an Intel solution, and that it doesn't scale up to enterprise levels. But it makes perfect sense for SGI to phase out Irix in favor of a Linux with all the support for visualization that plays to SGI's strengths. And it makes sense for the rest to shift R&D from proprietary OSs, into Linux, to develop the enterprise level features and strength on non-Intel platforms to allow them to phase out AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, etc.
This is a clear win for Linux (witness XFS, etc.), and we ought to encourage this as much as possible.