By Rachel Chalmers
With a gold sponsorship of this week’s Linux Expo in Ralegh, North Carolina to its name, SGI (Don’t call us Silicon Graphics Inc) has sought to clarify its operating system strategy. The company’s problem is that where OSs are concerned, it has an embarrassment of riches: namely, Cray’s Unicos, its own Irix, Microsoft’s Windows NT and buzzword du jour Linux. Now SGI confirms its support for Linux while reinforcing its commitment to making Irix highly scalable – a logical enough arrangement that resembles Sun’s bipartisan support for Linux and Solaris.
The big difference is that Sun is not also supporting Unicos and NT. No single operating system can meet the diverse needs of all customers, since not all customers are exactly alike, explains senior VP of the Computer Systems Business Unit, John Vrolyk. With standards-based systems – and we’re guessing that phrase is supposed to refer to both Linux and NT – SGI will be part of the community enhancing these growing operating systems, while also continuing to expand and evolve the powerful capabilities of Irix and Unicos.
In other words, nothing has changed. There are still four operating systems competing for attention at SGI. Is the Mountain View, California-based company sensibly hedging its bets, or desperately lunging at any business opportunity that presents itself? That will be for the customers to decide.
