> can one be a little bit comodity?
HP seems to be making a go of it, and their product line spans a wider range the SGI even including the Nintendo 64.
I don't think that SGI's problem was that they were in the wrong place -- at the high end of the graphics business. SGI for years built boxes that did what noone else could do -- and their exsistance attracted customers and applications to real-time 3D.
I think that SGI just didn't understand just how quickly the Wintel world responds to market opportunities in the $3,000 to $7,000 price range. Once the technology got to that point -- either SGI had to compete IRIX successfully in the sub $4,000 space (which would have be a hard sell with ISV's) or go to NT. They didn't do the former, so the latter was inevitable. I don't know how Sun will avoid it -- it'll be interesting to see.
I think though that the UNIX marketplace will end up being a great set of Harvard B-School case studies on how to throw away opportunities. UNIX vendors (still today) waste huge amounts of duplicate efforts while at the sametime are engaged in battle with a highly integrated hardware/software standard -- Wintel. Thing the UNIX vendor could have done to protect their turf
* true 100% source code compatibility
* common commodity motherboards with a common memory and CPU slot
architecture.
* standard I/O controllers, buses, and drivers
each of these would have tended to increase viability of the UNIX workstation market against the NT threat -- but none of them were achieved. "I'd rather fight than switch" NIH attitude exsisted (exsists) in each of the UNIX camps. Yep, these will be fine case-studies.
SGI and IRIX have (I believe) a good future as they have good technologies, people, and product differentiators. That they have realized that the low-end (from their point of view) desktop is going to NT, allows them to continue innovating products that you and I will use to create great stuff. At the same time, the ultra-high-end, should (if executed of course) kick serious butt -- as data and bandwidth requirements are going to grow "faster that Moore" with the advent of cable modems/DSL/video on demand/etc.
Best regards,
john |
