<<For now I'm betting on Wintel for my investments and will invest
there.>>
Paul, based on your previous posts, I understood that you were betting on Wintel and against SGI for quite some time.
Seriously, though, you're right -- NT is growing rapidly in the low-to-midrange workstation market. SGI is addressing this partially by porting some key apps to NT, such as Alias/Wavefront, Cosmo authoring tools, etc. You also have to realize that there's more to high-performance graphics workstation than just a fast processor. Even though Intel is addressing the situation with PentiumII, it's going to take a while for Wintel vendors to evolve system designs that will have high-performance graphics and video I/O. If you look at Intergraph, they've found it pretty difficult for the past 3-4 years trying to come up with NT workstation designs that will kill SGI. The O2, Indigo2 and Octane are competing quite successfully against NT in their respective price ranges.
The main problems for SGI had been self-inflicted: glitches in the transition to new products, lack of control over expenses, and over-ambitious expansion plans & acquisitions. These are MANAGEMENT problems, not technology problems. |
