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SGI Faces Another Reorganization

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the we-heard-this-just-last-year dept.

dewey writes "This article [from Yahoo! News] says that SGI is expected to announce another business restructuring next Tuesday. No details about the reorg yet, but the buzz is that the focus will be away from big customers buying high-end machines and more toward being better able to 'compete on the Web' -- whatever that means." Update: It may mean more Linux support; jho sent in a link to the new SGI Linux page. A ray of hope in SGI's otherwise gloomy future, perhaps?

10 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Indigo2 is an Incredible Box by daviddennis · · Score: 2

    Two questions:

    What's the non-linear editing software like, and how does one find a copy of it?

    How do you find a reasonably affordable 100mbps Ethernet card for an Indigo2? I thought most of them were $ 800 plus.

    D

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  2. The article seems to be fried ... by daviddennis · · Score: 2

    but if Roblimo's description is accurate, I don't think much of the approach. With SGI's NT efforts having a relatively poor reception, I would think they'd want to emphasize supercomputers and high-end workstations and servers as their core strengths.

    D

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  3. Tricky situation for SGI by ChrisRijk · · Score: 2
    Selling boxes for 'portals' and internet companies in general is seen a a 'growth' market - and some (like HP) are only now just starting to target this area. However, Sun really do have both the mindshare and marketshare for high-end internet-related stuff. SGI, which isn't doing very well at the moment (it made a 'surprise' profit in the last quarter, when it has been making losses recently) will have to work really hard to be able to make a good grab for this market - on the high end they'll be mostly up against Sun (on their home turf too) while on the low end they'll be against a pretty crowded market, and jumping on the Linux bandwagon won't help a great deal here.

    Shame really - SGI have some really sweet technology. Been rather letdown by management lately it seems. I know some people who are kinda traditional buyers of high-end (ie Origin 2000s) SGI kit and they aren't too impressed with SGI's moves recently.

    If SGI are going to drop/lose/sell some of their high-end stuff, I wonder who's going to buy... Sun bought the physical design for the Starfire about 3 years ago for $100M. Now they're making about as much revenue off the Starfire (including attached storage and services) as SGI are making in total...

  4. SGI doom and gloom? by mattdm · · Score: 2
    I'm not sure why SGI articles on Slashdot are always accompanied by negative editorial comments from the /. folks. They make great hardware, they've got great technology, and they're actually making a profit. Sure, they're not taking the world be storm, but that's not the same thing as being on the verge of collapse.

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    1. Re:SGI doom and gloom? by daviddennis · · Score: 2

      I suspect those of us (including me) who love their traditional product line are bitter about their attempted conversion to NT. The fact that it doesn't seem to have worked doesn't make us feel any better.

      It's tough not to love their products - I'm typing this on an ageing Indigo2 that's the best computer I've ever owned. What makes matters worse is that the traditional product line is the only one making them any money. Yes, the article says that won't last, but I think enough people prefer these systems to make a viable business out of them. If they took the money used to invest in the NT workstations and put them towards some serious cost control in their traditional line, I think they would have done much better.

      But that's just me speaking, and perhaps my love for their traditional systems clouds my judgement.

      D


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    2. Re:SGI doom and gloom? by daviddennis · · Score: 2

      Remember their road map from a year or so back? It was pretty clear that their then-plans were to eliminate Irix and MIPS, replacing them with Wintel.

      Now they have abruptly "discovered" Linux, and hopefully they can build some nice hardware around it, but their clumsy embrace of NT still rankles.

      D

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  5. Re:Software... by daviddennis · · Score: 2

    I was thinking it might come with the video capture system for the box, which I've seen for sale on occasion.

    D

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  6. What I think by mattdm · · Score: 2
    My interpretation of the current SGI-Linux development is this:

    The company suits decide "The world is moving to NT. We must move to NT."

    The techs, of course, respond with "Oh god no." So they push Linux as an alternate hot, emergent technology -- one that doesn't suck.

    The best parts of Irix technology can be moved into Linux, they can still make awesome hardware, the company does well, and everybody's happy.

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  7. SGI's Linux and OSS Info by Jordy · · Score: 2
    In case anyone cares, http://oss.sgi.com/ is SGI's Open Source web page.

    Their project list on http://oss.sgi.com/projects/ lists the following ongoing projects:
    SGI Linux® (for Intel ® based servers)
    Linux/MIPS (Indy etc.)
    Linux on the SGI Visual Workstations
    SGI kdb (Linux kernel debugger)
    XFS (high perf journalling file system)
    Bigmem (Big Memory support for Linux)
    lcrash (Linux post crash analyzer)
    CRCalc (Constructive Reals Calculator, Java Applet)
    OpenVault (mass storage management and framework)
    STL (C++ standard template library)
    GLX (OpenGL extensions to X)


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    The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
  8. Re:Many Are Missing the Point by Jamie+Zawinski · · Score: 2
    I agree with the person who said SGI should extend into the consumer graphics hardware business. I can only imagine how fast Diamond Mm et al. would fall to the might of SGI hardware.
    In my opinion, that would be suicide. SGI are not cut out to be 'graphics board' manufacturers. They build complete systems.

    I think SGI's best hope for survival would have been for them to have expanded into the PC graphics board business in 1993 or 1994. They should have been 3DFx -- instead, 3DFx was founded by SGIers who jumped ship. It's far too late for that now.

    I remember being stunned at the marketing campaign for the Indy -- they had an ad where someone was saying, ``finally, SGI is making a computer that's just like everyone else's!'' Yeah, except that it cost 3x as much! They got the idea that they should be building these low-end general-purpose Unix workstations, and were actually downplaying the fact that these machines all came with kick-ass graphics as a standard feature.

    It's hard to tell what business SGI is actually in these days, after all of these reorgs. They seem to have sold off the part of the company that does graphics hardware. What's left? Has SGI turned into a VA Research clone?

    This is all very sad, because SGI has done some amazing things.

    And you know, Sun can't build graphics hardware or software to save their life. Never have. It's sad to see that some people think that Sun is actually competition to SGI. Well, they are competition, but they're just not in the same league, dammit.

    This means I'm never going to be able to get spare parts or bug fixes for my O2, doesn't it? Sigh.