Hard on the heels of a surprise profitable quarter – its first after seven consecutive quarters in the red – workstation giant SGI has promised an update on strategy within the next two weeks. Once famous for its high-end graphics workstations, SGI seemed to lose its way after acquiring the supercomputing company Cray in 1996. Earlier this year, executives were still trying to sell SGI’s smorgasbord of three microprocessor architectures and four operating systems as a coherent and unified strategy (CI No 3,644).
A revised program of emphasizing the Intel-based Linux and NT workstation lines, slashing head count and finding new markets for its data visualization tools appears to have paid off in this quarters’ results. Now, in an interview with CNet, chief executive Rick Belluzzo has promised that further changes will be announced August 5. He hinted at greater focus on the internet, appliance servers and application hosting. He also recognized the need for new partnerships like last week’s deal with Nvidia (CI No 3,708).
Finally, Belluzzo said that SGI will help develop Linux to the point where it supports ccNUMA (non-uniform memory access). This high-end server scaling technology acquired new credibility when IBM bought Sequent earlier this month (CI No 3,701). We think Linux is important, Belluzzo said. We think it’s the operating system of the internet. The opportunity is to make Linux more powerful, which we intend to do. That makes the loss of Dave McAllister, SGI’s strategic technologist who recently jumped ship to join TurboLinux, all the more unfortunate.
