Monday was the first day since 1986 that the stock of Silicon Graphics Inc., better known as SGI, has not been traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Its recent delisting is just the latest chapter of a long, painful story that analysts say is loaded with lessons for other companies. However, company executives say SGI’s customer base remains loyal and its technology base is strong enough to sustain it, albeit in narrow vertical markets.
It’s sad to see a once great company fall victim to commodity pc hardware on Linux. I am sure this is a great day for the GNU zealot/linus towel boy types.
Great?
Why because they had cutting edge tech that most mere mortals could not afford?
Most people can afford a system that can run Linux which is good for all of us. SGI provids niche products for a high end market. If this proves anything about SGI & Linux, it is that SGI were too shortsighted to forseen changes (but who can) in the market that have so affected them. Plus, it’s not Linux alone that has affect SGI, it’s also the ever faster clock speeds of Intel based hardware and other operating systems that has affected SGI’s market share.
Now go away troll.
> Plus, it’s not Linux alone that has affect SGI, it’s also the ever faster clock speeds of Intel based hardware and other operating systems that has affected SGI’s market share.
It is not so much the competition that effected SGI, but rather SGI decided to just give up to the competition. Instead of sticking to their own competencies and continuing the development of MIPS, SGI chose to be a complete pussy scared shitless of MS and Intel later deciding to abandon MIPS altogether and board Itanic, which as we all know is a complete piece of junk. SGI could have kept MIPS competitive if they chose so. SGI should be good example to everyone out there of how not to chase after hype (Itanic and Linux) and stick to your own thing you know best.
They failed to inovate at the right times. Hurry someone swallow them up and put them out fo their misery.
I think SGI management has it all wrong! Instead of focusing on their products, they seem to be focusing on management.
Commodore. A company that made amazing products but had poor management.
Wrong – SGI is still alive and a kicking – The stock symbol has just changed to SGID.
http://www.sgi.com/company_info/newsroom/press_releases/2005/novemb…
No, right. OTC stands for “over the counter” trading which does not take place at the stock market itself. SGI stock therefore is not “listed” (hence de-listing) at the NYSE the way it was before. Price discovery still takes place though, which is why they changed the symbol.
By delisting from a stock exchange, the company does not have to comply with the strict rules on disclosure, etc. which results in cost reduction and also facilitates restructuring since the company is not in the media spotlight as much as it is when listed (ad-hoc statements, more analyst attention, etc.)
I might be wrong though since I know more about european regulation than about the SEC rules. Feel free to correct me.
This is called spin. OTC trading may as well be run out of some guy’s apartment. You want to buy some of my stock? It’s only 10 cents a share.
“It’s sad to see a once great company fall victim to commodity pc hardware on Linux. I am sure this is a great day for the GNU zealot/linus towel boy types.”
Sure, MS has nothing to do with that. And poor management and too expensive hardware either.
Give us a break with your silly anti-linux rants.
“Still, SGI lost $19 million last quarter and expects to lose somewhat less this quarter. This is a company that earned $730 million in 2004 and made more than $3 billion in 1997, its peak year.”
SGI did what IBM did in the late 80s and the beginning of 90s. They just kept their focus on their big machines with high margins. They didn’t look up to see what the rest of the world was doing.
IBM still sells huge computers, but they have a distributed risk now. They don’t have a single product that everything is build on.
SGI is finding it self again the same way IBM had to find it self in the 90s.
Shafted!
SGI – please wake up and find what Sun found – Linux is not the way to go!. It only works if you don’t have an OS – like for guys like Dell or Gateway or embedded guys.
You have a fantastic OS called IRIX – just put some effort – and perhaps open source it like Solaris and maybe you just might survive.
I agree. Irix is a fantastic OS that just needs some TLC. No one wants $$$ Itaniums running Linux. Its too narrow a vertical market, so to speak. Release Irix as OSS or port to intel but don’t let it die.
Oh gee, it looks like SGI Linux strategy worked marvels for them. NOT! Freaking idiots should have stuck to their guns and kept on developing IRIX and MIPS. Instead they decided to save some $$ and leech off the comunity using Linux. SGI lost its innovation edge the minute it started switching to Linux and customer felt it right off the bat leaving SGI in droves. IRIX is still more advanced than Linux even though IRIX development pretty much completely halted years ago, that should tell you how backwards SGI is with their move. The move to Linux pretty much alienated all old time SGI fans (myself included). Silicon Graphics had very good thing going, but they f*cked it up royally.
SGI builds the most scalable and fastest single computer system on the planet, but some people are saying their financial problems are the result of Linux. Those people don’t have a clue. SGI could have put Linux on the Opteron or on the PowerPC. They chose Intanium for a reason.
For the research their Altix systems are designed for, the floating point potential of the Itanium beats anything available. They never were trying to create a cheap Linux cluster, they are in the business of building supercomputers and graphics workstations.
If you go look at their website they still run IRIX on their MIPS workstations as well as NT on custom PC workstations.
I would ask anyone who comments negatively about Linux provide some facts to back up their opinions. Most people who talk negatively about Linux, like SCO and Scott McNealy and Jonathan Schwartz and Steve Balmer and Microsoft, have either retracted their comments or propogandize their lies hoping broadcast media can change the facts to support their position. Unfortunately for them wishful thinking will not change reality.
Yes, SGI should keep sinking money into IRIX development, that would help them…
The problem isn’t the hardware or the OS that runs on top of it, Itanium + Linux is an excellent combination on the market that SGI is on: number-crunching supercomputers.
The problem is that SGI let itself get stuck in that market, and lost just about everything else. Commodity PC hardware is more than powerful enough to handle tasks that used to be handled by expensive SGI workstations and servers, like graphics, visualization and rendering.
Instead of diversifying, they just sat there while the likes of Dell and HP ate away most of their cake.
“SGI – please wake up and find what Sun found – Linux is not the way to go!”
Please… Sun found exactly what? Sun never had a consistent Linux strategy, and their increased focus on Solaris hasn’t proved that fruitful. The thing that *is* proving fruitful are their Opteron boxes which (unlike Sun zealots may try to push) are mostly being sold to run Windows or *Linux*, not Solaris.
> Yes, SGI should keep sinking money into IRIX development, that would help them…
It is too late for SGI to do anything with IRIX, it is hopelessly lost and no one is suggesting that resurrecting IRIX will change the situation. SGI should have held on to IRIX when it was still hot and if SGI have done that, perhaps it wouldn’t have completely lost the content creation, 3D, CAD, and visualisation markets. Idiots in penguin suits screwed the whole thing up followed by Intel and their Itanium junk.
> The problem isn’t the hardware or the OS that runs on top of it, Itanium + Linux is an excellent combination on the market that SGI is on: number-crunching supercomputers.
SGI is currently in a razor thin niche, where there are sqeezed from all sides by commodity clusters. SGI’s NUMA supercomputers address a very limited set of problems in HPTC while loosing out to cheaper clusters across all other areas. SGI had a much larger market with their IRIX/MIPS strategy where they could cater to a much larger application base — SGI pretty much owned 3D content creation, film/broadcast postproduction, energy and other markets; now they relegated themselves to HPTC, where they soon could be stompt by the likes of IBM or Sun.
From what I understand, IRIX has a bucket load of machine specific code that would be an absolute bitch to port it over. The best alternative would be to standardise on Itanium – they’ve already put their ass into the market, they might as well throw the rest of the body into it.
Move to SUN and port Solaris and JES (SUN’s whole server software lineup) over to Itanium; provide Itanium machines that cover all the areas; from workstations to servers to high density computational boxes used by scientists – work with Computer Associates to get their Ingres database ported to Solaris for Itanium, and work with Oracle and Sybase.
SGI needs to move outside its niche; this is its last ditch at grabbing customers, they need to atleast SHOW to their creditors that there is customer numbers growth, the money is being put to some good use and that partners are growing – if they can demonstrate the right moves, creditors will be willing to help them get on their feet again; too bad the can’t get their shit together, because it’ll be simply a matter of time when creditors pull the plug and say, ‘enough it enough, roll up the business and fold in”.
The Itanium doesn’t suck per say, its their pricing TODAY that costs a bloody fortune; if they priced Itanium machines at the same price as AMD ones – the same price point that SUN is selling their AMDs at, then maybe they would actually get some people interested in developing for it as the price performance would finally be of a decent standing.
I’ve seen a lot of comments on several sites stating that someone should buy SGI. But I wanna know is it really worth it? IIRC they sold off most of the worthwhile and interesting intellectual property sometime ago.
I’d buy one of those FUEL systems if they didn’t cost 3 times the value of my car for the lowest end model.
Its all about pricing for percieved value.
I mean look on ebay sometime for SGI machines, there are jokers out there that think they can get 10K for a machine that is 10 years old. I can get a new machine for a fraction of that cost and have it run performance circles around that old hardware.
As Hanibal of Arstechnica pointed out, the problem with SGI and likes is that they have to compete with not one company or a few, but with an entire industry. Commodity PCs include hw from nVidia, AMD, Intel, ATI etc. and software from MS, open-source etc. And then there is a lone SGI with otherwise excellent technology …