“The company’s decision to offer Linux on Intel processors also
smacks against SGI’s core group of customers, although Bishop made
it clear the company’s MIPS-Irix strategy is separate from anything
it does with Linux. “We’re not putting Linux on MIPs,” he
said.”
“What I’m seeing in this back-to-the-future strategy is the user
base may have become disenchanted,” Garden said. “That’s the
problem we see with this…strategy and why they need to embrace
the Internet strategy, which is a go-forward strategy.” But the
company’s Linux plans are very much about the Internet, Bishop
said. “Linux will be the gateway to broadband Internet,” he
said.”
“With Linux entrenched on Web servers, delivery of movies
and other forms of entertainment over broadband is a natural fit,
Bishop said. “Instead of e-commerce we should be talking about
media commerce, or m-commerce,” he said. SGI’s chief executive
believes the company’s history providing compute-intensive servers,
which are popular among movie studios, makes it a natural fit in
the m-commerce era. “That’s a story that’s very similar to the one
they’ve been telling for years, although Linux is different,”
Gartner’s McGuckin said. “For SGI to attach as much as it has to
Linux–essentially tying their wagon to the Linux star–that’s a
very risky endeavor on their part.”