SGI trumps Altix 330 server to build volumes

The latest server offer ing from Silicon Graphics Systems (SGI) - the Altix
330 - has a commodity touch to it. This is rather an unusual move from a
company that always focused on mid-range and high-end systems in the
high-performance computing space. Is SGI new strategy eyeing the mass-market
with low-end high-performance products?

In an exclusive meeting with The DQ Week, at the SGI Partner Enablement
Program (PEP) held in Goa, Prasad Medury, MD, SGI India, said, "The latest
64-bit Itanium-2-based Altix 330 server will be a winning product not only for
the low-end requirement of the engineering and computational science market, it
will be possibly do well even for the database market. This will help us build
volumes and subsequent increase in market share."

The company claims that the Altix 330 will beat all other competing products
in its class hands down with respect to price over performance. The Altix 330 is
an addition to the company's other Altix offering, viz. the Altix 350, the
Altix 3000, the clusterable offering released couple of years back.

SGI was predominantly known for its specialized servers, storage and
visualization products for the scientific and technical computing market place.
From its inception, SGI has worked closely with the scientific, engineering and
creative user communities and has been a major supplier of computer,
visualization, and storage technology within these markets.

This is probably for the first time in recent years SGI has positioned itself
with a product that targets the low-end and mid-market place.

The Altix family of high-performance servers is based on the SGI Numa global
shared memory architecture. It uses 64-bit Linux and Intel Itanium-2 processors.
Altix systems scale from two processors to a 512-processor configuration.
Planned future products will scale to a 1024-processor system.

SGI defines its market in terms of five major industry segments. These
segments are government and defense industry; manufacturing; science (including
biosciences); energy and media. "High-performance computing is what we do
best for these markets, but with the new product offerings that we have now, we
may look in to the possibilities of exploring other market such as the banks and
databases," said Avinash Fotedar, Director Marketing, SGI India.

SGI's PEP is an annual channel partner program wherein tier-1 and tier-2
partners are updated and educated on SGI's latest product offerings and
technology. Partners are trained on new products with product demos. At the end
of the program, performers (individual and organization) are recognized at an
awards ceremony.

During the meet the company also announced that it will aggressively expand
its channel distribution strategy and indirect sales model. "Currently, the
tier-1 partners contribute 70 per cent of SGI's business in India. We want to
change this by enabling the tier-2 partner to do an equal percentage of business
for SGI over the next few year," said Prasad.

SGI's tier-1 partners include, Tata Elxsi, CMC, PCS Industries, CMS
Computers and most recently Redington (India) as the master reseller. There are
about 35 tier-2 partners for India.

Nelson Johny

Goa (The writer was hosted in Goa by SGI India)