[rescue] SGI files for bankruptcy

["Javi Mahai <lefa at ucsc.edu>" at ucsc.edu]

On Mon, 08 May 2006 12:57:04 -0400
  "Bryan Gurney" <arb_npx42 at comcast.net> wrote:

> 
> In my opinion, the big bet on Itanium had a bit to do 
>with it.  Intel had touted it as the Next Big Thing (TM), 
>and it fizzled.  Of the three big X86 server makers (HP, 
>IBM, and Dell), the number of them producing Itanium 
>systems has gone down from three to one, and the only one 
>remaining is also the origin of the Itanium itself. 
> Meanwhile, SGI was apparently trying to obsolete Irix on 
>MIPS in favor of Linux on Itanium.  I don't think their 
>Itanium yearly sales broke over 1000 units; I'd like to 
>search for the 2005 total Itanium sales figures, but I'm 
>busy stripping shingles off of a roof right now (ugh).

I guess if you force your existing customers to move from 
Irix/MIPS to Linux/IA64, all those customers are gonna 
review other offerings... since they have been forced to 
move to begin with. This is something that the SGI honchos 
completelly missed, which sort of makes you wonder why 
they were made honchos to begin with. But seriously, if 
you force your customers to move a different platform, and 
your platform has not a single differenciating feature 
from the rest of the competing offerings out there and on 
top of that it is at least 2x as expensive... and you 
expect to retain customers. You are pretty much calling 
your customers morons. And I know people who were insulted 
by the assumption that they were told to move from an 
expensive MIPS offering, to an equally expensive offering 
that was based on a free OS and off the shelf components. 
For an laugh, I knew a person who took an SGI rep and 
showed him a webpage with an Opteron system from SUN, and 
basicaly asked the SGI rep why on heaven's he should buy 
the SGI prism he was being offered when he pretty much 
could buy almost 3 systems from SUN which were as 
powerful, if not more, than the system SGI was bringing to 
the table. Basically he asked the SGI rep: "you have 1 
minute to tell me a single reason why I should waste my 
time with you guys" I guess that sort of says it all. It 
is just the normal evolution of the markets, pretty much 
the same story was going on in the mid 80s and mini 
vendors when confronted with processor based server 
solutions.... and so history repeats itself.

> 6 months from delisting from the NYSE to Chapter 11. 
> Here's hoping that someone big and good picks them up 
>and does something meaningful with their IP, instead of 
>just pigeonholing it and collecting royalties.  I'd like 
>to see Sun make a move, but it may be a while, because 
>all the players probably want the carcass to rot a little 
>bit more before swooping down.

SGI has no IP left, they sodl everything they could. I 
think the only thing they have left is some of their 
interconnect technology, and even that is not really state 
of the art any more. So pretty much SGI is of no interest 
to anyone out there..... sad but true.