Some SGI reports from Techweb........
techweb.com
This will be both UNIX and NT SAN.
If you saw Bill Gates keynote at Comdex than you saw the power of SGIs new boxes.
December 14, 1998, Issue: 821
Section: News
SGI jockeys for comeback with storage agenda
Joe Wilcox
Mountain View, Calif. -- Silicon Graphics Inc. is capitalizing on its strength in
digital content creation and its first NT workstation to fashion a comeback that
some experts predict could propel the beleaguered company into the commodity
market.
The company this week will reveal a new storage area network (SAN) strategy
aimed at migrating its technology in the area of high-bandwidth media storage to
the enterprise.
File sharing is the big-ticket item Silicon Graphics will introduce to enterprise
Unix SANs, said Tom Lahive, senior analyst with Dataquest, San Jose, Calif.
"[Silicon Graphics] is the first server company to leverage its experience in the
server marketplace of developing clusters, file-sharing capabilities and high
throughput directly from the server to the storage device into the SAN," he said.
The company, based here, plans to introduce Windows NT SAN technology
during the first half of 1999, said Anne Vincenti-Lambert, Silicon Graphics'
director of storage and networking marketing.
Meanwhile, on Jan. 11, the company is expected to unveil its first NT
workstation, the Visual PC. The workstation and the SAN strategy complement
each other because of their strong ties to digital content creation, analysts said.
The vendor's roots in digital media could prove instrumental in opening new
commodity markets for Silicon Graphics and differentiate the Visual PC from a
crowded pack of NT workstations by other vendors, analysts said.
"In particular, the digital content creation market, which has been [Silicon
Graphics'] home turf, is very demanding for high-data throughput and good
graphics," said Peter ffoulkes, senior analyst at Dataquest. "And these are two
things [Silicon Graphics] has in spades and in talent."
Silicon Graphics initially will try to reclaim its home turf in digital content
creation and then move into broader commodity markets, analysts said.
Two workstation models will lead Silicon Graphics' charge from Unix into the
Windows NT space. The Visual PC 320 is a dual-processor-capable 400MHz
Pentium II system with memory expandable to 1 Gbyte, integrated dual stream
video, integrated graphics based on Silicon Graphics' Cobalt chipset and three
PCI expansion slots.
The second model, the Visual PC 540, supports up to four 400MHz Pentium II
Xeon processors and doubles memory expandability and the number of PCI
slots. The 540 is SCSI-based, while the 320 uses IDE and only offers SCSI as
an option.
Analysts disagreed on the value of the 540's four Xeon processor support.
"This certainly demonstrates [Silicon Graphics'] technological process, coming to
a commodity market with a system capable of four Xeon processors," said Jay
Moore, senior analyst at The Aberdeen Group, Boston. "But they may have a
hard time finding customers with applications that can take advantage of all that
power."
This does not matter at the outset because Silicon Graphics' initial target market
is its digital content creation install base, ffoulkes said. "The software in this
space is set up very well for multiprocessing," he said.
The vendor has a lot riding on a successful workstation launch, Moore said.
"[Silicon Graphics'] challenge is to open new markets," Moore said.
"Technologically, [the workstation] is one of the best products in the industry,
but customers are still looking to believe in the company again."
Earlier this year, Silicon Graphics brought in Chief Executive Richard Belluzzo,
formerly Hewlett-Packard Co.'s executive vice president and general manager
of the Computer Organization. Analysts speculated Belluzzo's experience in the
commodity market would be crucial to revitalizing niche-market-oriented Silicon
Graphics.
The first signs are there, but the company has a long way to go, Moore said.
---
SGI's SAN plan:
- Will unveil new SAN strategy aimed at migrating its technology to the
enterprise.
- Will roll out file sharing for enterprise Unix SANs.
- Will introduce Windows NT SAN technology early in 1999.
techweb.com
demonstrated the
product at Comdex last week during Bill Gates
keynote. "Amazing," said Gates, after watching the
product do a live, 30-frames-per-second video feed of
the keynote inside a rotating 3D CAD image. The
Comdex keynote crowd of several thousand people
applauded wildly during the demonstration.
Tom Furlong, senior vice president at SGI, said the
performance the company is delivering to the market
would have cost $100,000 only a short time ago.
Furlong said the all-digital memory flat-panel display
with color calibration is a breakthrough. The flat panel
display, the 1600SW, won rave reviews from Comdex
showgoers.
SGI is in the midst of beefing up its channel in a bid to
grab a larger slice of the mainstream NT workstation
market......and more |
