Comments on: First GM, now Silicon Graphics. Lessons learned?
The optimist in me wants to believe that even the most raging egos must know that all glory is fleeting. What with Silicon Valley's famous chronic self-absorption, that's not a sure bet.
The optimist in me wants to believe that even the most raging egos must know that all glory is fleeting. What with Silicon Valley's famous chronic self-absorption, that's not a sure bet.
Web sites launch all the time, but they also shut their doors. We highlight 15 that bit the dust this year.
Let the debate begin: Was the iPhone more important than iTunes? Was anything bigger than Google finding a great business model? CNET offers its list of the 10 most important stories of the '00s.
Charles Cooper has covered technology and business for more than 25 years. A graduate of Queens College and Columbia University, Cooper received the Excellence in Journalism award from the Northern California branch of the Society for Professional Journalists for column writing.
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As is, getting $25 million sounds pretty high; they must have a lot of corporate real estate in their holdings to get that much. :-)
Still, using them back in the early nineties was 'way cool'!
As for AG's quote, well, can only say the exception is when folks see you in the accessibility field. Then they think you belong on an isolated island in Hawaii.
Added to the challenge of integrating Cray into SGI was SGI's management at the time, which makes current banking leaders look pale in comparison.
Next was the proprietary Windows Visual Workstation, which was obsolete by the time it shipped. Some would claim it failed because it was designed for Windows 2000, which was a year late.
But the bit one was the brilliant idea to embrace Itanium. First, with a plan to run their IRIX operating system on an Itanium-based Origin NUMA machine, and later the idea to dump IRIX and put Linux on the Itanium NUMA machines. SGI executed on this plan very well. However, it did not pay off as John Mashey and others at SGI had hoped. Some would claim this failure was due to Itanium 2 being years late.
SGI always seemed to mistime everything. But ultimately, when you let the government get into your business, and then decide to depend on the innovation of others for your sucess, you have problems.
That, and tons of half eaten food, shrimp, sandwiches, and drinks. What a profligate waste. Their HR department was a major part of the problem--they thought they ran the place, and fomented politics up the kazoo.
It was like Apple in the bad old 90% gross margin days. SGI was warned, but they learned none of the lessons.