What are you, nuts? People don't buy based solely on merits! They buy stuff based on all sorts of intangibles, including product exposure, percieved value, future stability of the company, etc. Take a marketing course for gods sake! Silicon Valley is littered with the remains of companys that had superior products. If you do not market appropriately, and target your products, you can kiss it goodbye, better technology or whatever else you have going for you...
I would recommend a book entitled "Inside the Tornado," can't remember the author right now, but he discusses in depth the life cycle and potential directions of Silicon Valley companies. The perception of the buyer's though is critically important, especially at this stage of SGI's growth. They have to either 1) convince buyers that their machines are the best for their purpose, and give them adequate customer support, or 2) lower their margins and just get more machines out there, so that they will actually have a large customer base.
Anyway, I would argue that the technical merits of the systems are less important than the marketing and pipeline aspects of SGI's operations, because it's pretty much obvious that the machines are technically superior. And with the Cray acquisition, they should be pretty much set technologically by just porting stuff from Cray machines to SGI machines. They need to concentrate on getting more machines out there, that is the bottom line.
By the way, I think the guy that wrote the book I referred to is actually a consultant for SGI... |
