Statements from Bob Pette, SGI VP Corporate Marketing

Update: The actual interview can be heard as part of the Special Edition Podcast.

I just got off a phone call with Bob Pette, Vice President of Corporate Marketing at SGI, regarding today’s announcement of bankruptcy and acquisition of a merger with Rackable.  The phone call will be in an upcoming Special Edition podcast to come later tonight, but some highlights for you:

• SGI was saddled with a large debt coming out of the last bankruptcy, and was doing fine until the recent economic downturn.
• The new company’s name is still to be determined, although the “SGI” and “Silicon Graphics” names bring alot of brand equity.
• No significant reduction in personnel is expected, although some overlap will obviously happen in HR & Operations that will result in slight reductions
• No overlap of high-end products, a little overlap in the lower-end x86 space may result in a few products being scrapped.
• SGI expects to no impact to current support contracts, or outstanding purchases (like the DOD’s recent $40mil acquisition)  (Corrected 10:09)

Check back later for the audio of the phone call, and more!

This story written by Randall Hand

Randall Hand is a computer graphics programmer and news junky that's been working in the field for the last 15 years. He's responsible for visualizations generated on some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, ytnef, mullion support in ParaView, and VizWorld.com.