[Beowulf] Rackable / SGI

[Ian Dillon]

Killian,

As it turns out, Joe Landman and I had a very good conversation about the
state of HPC on Monday.  Please note that I do not want to turn this thread
into a sales and marketing pitch but rather make a couple suggestions to
your concern about EMEA support/resources for HPC.  

I head up the Global Channel for Cray's CX1 product and as such, have
recruited several well qualified VARs and SIs that support HPC customers.
Like Scalable and Penguin, Cray seeks the best of breed partners and what I
can tell you is that these folks are happy to help and would do so with a
vendor agnostic approach.

The other concept I would like to introduce to is that internally, the Cray
CX1 team is developing a concept of an HPC University.  Basically, this
vehicle would bring the HPC community together to exchange ideas and
direction of HPC overall.  It will also serve as a means for individuals new
to HPC to quickly come up to speed.  In other words, Cray would establish an
HPC 101 tutorial and soliciting input from HPC veterans :)

Lastly, if you have any questions about Cray's direction and/or approach to
HPC, please send them directly to me - ipdillon at cray.com

I don't want to litter this newsgroup with too many posts.

Thanks,
Ian

-----Original Message-----
From: beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org [mailto:beowulf-bounces at beowulf.org] On
Behalf Of Kilian CAVALOTTI
Sent: Wednesday, April 01, 2009 6:49 AM
To: landman at scalableinformatics.com
Cc: beowulf at beowulf.org
Subject: Re: [Beowulf] Rackable / SGI

On Wednesday 01 April 2009 14:56:46 Joe Landman wrote:
> As for the market shrinking, well ... this does happen.  We (Scalable)
> are happy to help customers out (service/support on existing systems,
> new clusters/storage), as is Don's company (Penguin), as are other
> companies here.  Some of us are doing well and growing.

That's good to hear, especially for the US market. I was thinking about us, 
European customers, who don't have access to that many "smaller" (no 
disrespect nor disdain here) companies, and who often have to rely on big 
names for our HPC projects. There are a few services/integration HPC
companies 
in the EU, but not any that I'm aware of selling their own hardware, as 
Scalable or Penguin do. That's why I'm kind of concerned to see the number
of 
our purchasing options reducing rapidly.

What about SGI's international sales, btw? AFAIK, Rackable is not present on

the EU market, so will they expand here, or will they withdraw SGI's
branches 
and activities? The press release states "SGI's international operations
would 
be part of the sale, but would not be part of the bankruptcy process.", and 
I'm not quite sure what's the real meaning of this.

Cheers,
-- 
Kilian
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