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Technology Stocks : Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim Davison who wrote (3401)	10/31/1997 11:20:00 PM
From: pass pass	Respond to of 14451

NT boxes are specialized servers. They are for corporate users. Compared with Sun, SGI or HP's UNIX based workstations, they are very cheap. I expect SGI to do well in that area because they know how to make good servers. NT workstation may hold the golden key for SGI's turnaround.

To: Jim Davison who wrote (3401)	10/31/1997 11:23:00 PM
From: vincent bilotta	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14451

SGI's NT box will set the new standard for comodity computing. it's IO and graphics will rule and make every other offering disapointing. it will have connectivity to SGI servers that will make any other mixed enterprise solution antiquated. all the things one could never get on SGI platforms like cheap periferials and cards and low cost software will be there, and developers will write to SGI's specs so they can show off their chops.video I/O will work, in all flavors, and be inexpensive.and when you hand down your SGI NT box, your children will be very happy.and software maintainence annual fees will drop to a reasonable price. and most SGI apps are being ported, so we'll have the best of all worlds. and this will put SGI in everyones face, and they'll want to buy them. i promise this is all true. vincent

To: Jim Davison who wrote (3401)	10/31/1997 11:26:00 PM
From: Mang Cheng	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14451

"On the future of Silicon Graphics" From San Jose Mercury News Posted at 12:24 a.m. PST Friday, October 31, 1997 " McCracken: 'It seems like the time to move on' " Ed McCracken's resignation Wednesday as CEO of Silicon Graphics Inc. ended a 13-year reign over the Mountain View workstation maker. Yet until a new CEO is found, McCracken will set the strategy, fine tune the product plans, and supply the company vision. McCracken, 54, met Thursday with Mercury News Executive Business Editor Peter B. Hillan and Technology Reporter Tom Quinlan in his office. This is an edited transcript of their conversation. Q How did the discussion of the end of your tenure as CEO begin? A I've been CEO here for as long as I can remember. I have always felt that no one should be a CEO for no longer than about 10 years. After that, it's time for new ideas, new thinking and so on. My grand plan was to pass on the title sometime in the last three to four years. But things didn't work out. It just seems like the right time to step aside and move on. Q How did the discussions (with SGI's Board of Directors) on Tuesday evolve? A When I decided to resign from the company the board decided that they really wanted me to stay on as CEO until we found someone else. We had a chance to review the strategy of the company again and review some of the difficult steps we are taking now to resize the company. Some of the transition plans, the board is in full support of all of that. Q Have you started your replacement pursuit? A The board has a sub-committee which is responsible for the search. That is getting under way now. I don't know if they have signed a contract with a search company or not. It will probably take place later this week or next week to get it kicked off. Q Is there a short list? A I don't think so. They plan on doing a pretty wide screening. Q This morning you got up early and spoke to analysts and then met with employees, what was the internal reaction? A It was an emotional thing for me to get up in front of all our people. There's a lot of specialness about SGI. I will be around for the next nine months or so as we go through this process. We also unfortunately announced the cutback programs at the same time. It's really important for our employees to know what's going on. Q We heard that you received a standing ovation? A A few of them. I've been here for a long time. I know these people and we have been through thick and thin together. One of the things I admire about SGI people is the way they look at a problem. Most companies look at a problem like A+B=C. You know A, you know B, so you'll do C. Here it's A+B=Q. Since we've been here, I would imagine we have done about 50 systems in the last 13 years. Not one of them has been unsuccessful in terms of return on investment or sales or meeting the need of our customers. They've all been innovative. There hasn't been a copy of anyone else ever. So it's been a really attractive record. You can only do that with really special people. But the industry has changed. That's what we are facing now. The industry has been restructured and its important for SGI to change with the industry. Microsoft and Intel weren't the factors in the industry that they are today. Now the real challenge of our company is to merge the great graphics and interconnect technology that we have at SGI with the industry trends, to have access to the volume markets. The Unix workstation market that was growing just a few years ago at 25 percent a year is now growing at minus something, minus 10 percent perhaps. What a big change. And the only way to get back ahead of that is to do it with the cooperation of Intel and Microsoft. Q Some analysts or observers had suggested that it took Silicon Graphics so long because the company as a whole had gotten either arrogant or complacent. Do you agree with that? A Well, frankly, I think one of the reasons was that we were so good at it. We were so good at what we were doing. So we took a strategy further than other companies were able to take their strategies. We were able to innovate, we were able to be at the leading edge, we were able to gain marketshare on other companies. We're still gaining market share in Unix workstations, it's just that we're gaining marketshare in a declining market. Q What's your window of opportunity for making the move now? A Microsoft 5.0 is coming out which has a lot of new capabilities in it. I think it will be the first Microsoft operating system which is really good for a lot of the tasks our systems are used for. You know Intel is bringing out some great new processors and over time eventually will end up bringing out 64-bit processors. I think that with our graphics and our interconnect technologies wonderful opportunity in that space. Q How much will SGI have to change in order to succeed in that new market? A I think the biggest changes, frankly, are not on the technology side at all. Obviously, it needs great relationship programs with Intel and Microsoft and that's kind of new for us. But I think that biggest issues are in distribution. Q Can you say what you'd invest more in, what you might invest less in? A Well, we'd invest a lot more in E-commerce, a lot more in telephone selling, a lot more in building-to-order, distribution systems, sub-contract manufacturing, those kinds of things. The infrastructure side of things. Q How do you see continuing in your chairmanship role with the new CEO? A I wouldn't read too much into that statement that you saw in the press release. You know I think right now things are pretty firm until we find a new CEO. What happens after that is pretty open and whether I continue as chairman or even on the board or not, will be addressed at that time. Q As far as the 700 to 1,000 people being laid-off, have you identified areas where those numbers might come from? A We've had a chance to review all the operations in the company in the last three weeks. There are certain areas that we know they won't come from like our effort to introduce our NT and Intel-based systems. We won't be announcing the actual specific situations until some time of the week of Nov. 10th. It's not a kind of a general 10-percent cut across the board, it's very specific. We're actually going to be determining what projects are the most important and make sure we have enough people on those and then canceling the projects at the bottom of the priority list.