Mark Barrenechea, the CEO of the New SGI, sat down with John West over at InsideHPC for a lengthy discussion of the merger. Towards the bottom, John grills him on SGI’s previous big-vis offering: VUE.
Under CEO Bo Ewald’s leadership the company got back into visualization, and had just recently announced its VUE line of products (PowerVUE, RemoteVue, and FusionVue). Does visualization survive at the new company? Barrenechea says yes, but he describes this as a technology that is in “incubation.” I’ve spent some time with the VUE line, and I think it has potential, but Silicon Graphics didn’t seem to have a clear picture of the market for the product. Does Barrenechea have a better idea of where VUE fits into a viable market? Yes, but he’s not telling us. “I have a strong point of view, but I’m not ready to announce it except to say that it’s important, we’re committed to visualization…and watch this space.”
While I don’t share John’s enthusiasm for the VUE product, I do think it’s very important that SGI has an integrated visualization offering. If VUE is gonna be it, they need to get the ball rolling.
