Thanks tremendously for what you posted. A couple of comments/questions:
>>This is definitely anecdotal, but I heard from a SoftImage employee that SI sales on NT were a money loser for Microsoft, and their revenue continues to come from their SGI sales.<<
Interesting. It's a shame that Microsoft doesn't break this out -- I'd love to see it. In any case, I can tell you from personal experience that at least several SoftImage sales that have been made by groups in which I'm involved were made because SoftImage was available on both the SGI and Windows NT. There were actually some superior features in Alias/Wavefront when we did the analysis -- but nothing that could overcome (to us) the advantage of SoftImage being available on both.
>>So I guess the message here is that SGI continues to do well in these markets because the NT boxes, while offering a cheaper base price, are still not powerful enough to meet the demands of power users.<<
First...the compelling thing about PC/NT systems (at least to every group I'm involved in who makes this decision) isn't the initial purchase price -- rather it's the total cost of ownership when you take into account other software, service, hardware upgrades, and the like.
Secondly...you're absolutely right that there are many "power" applications that the NT/PC can't touch. In terms of power, we love our Onyx (note: not in terms of reliability, or cost, or lots of other factors -- but in terms of power). You'll get no disagreement from me that today many SGI systems offer power that you simply can't get on an NT/PC system.
>>And, when you build a high end NT system, its no longer cost effective compared with an integrated solution like O2.<<
I beg to differ -- having gone through exhaustive cost analysis many times that include not just purchase price but an estimated 3-5 year cost of ownership analysis, I have to disagree. For what it's worth, groups in which I'm personally involved are making decisions on hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment purchases -- and not based only on my analysis but others as well. I offer this not to refute your statement but rather to offer that there are groups of people who deeply disagree with you on this one.
>>Finally, nothing in the PC space can touch the power of the Octane, and this class of end user is rather power hungry.<<
Again -- I absolutely concede that there is a class of user that the NT/PC can't touch today.
>>The promise of "port to NT and sales will explode" hasn't panned out for a number of vendors because the hardware and OS services simply aren't compelling<<
Interesting point of view. And yet the number of vendors porting to NT seems to be accelerating. Why do you think this is, if results have been so disappointing to date?
Thanks again for this post! |
