That's just one part of the equation when you talk about servers. SGI has a very scalable fast machine, but that's just allows them to enter the market. If they really want to play they have to have services, support (7x24, 4 hour response, parts depots, etc). I think this is the major flaw in SGI's server sells strategy. When you try to sell a critical server to some corporation, bank or hospital, the first thing the customer want to know about is the support structure, high availabilty, parts availablity (which is almost non-existant at SGI), Speeds and feeds are the last thing they want to know about, it needs to be fast enough to do the job. But this has always been SGIs strategy for selling, how fast and how bleeding edge is how they try to sell servers, that's the last thing most companies want to know in this area. They want to know that if they have a problem, the data is protected and the machine will be back up quickly. It took SUN several years to learn this, SGI has just begun to realize that there is more to servers than speeds and feeds.
THop |
