The Rise and Fall of Silicon Graphics

Whenever this topic comes up there are always comments saying that SGI was taken by surprise by cheap hardware and if only they had seen it coming they could have prepared for it and managed it.

I was there around 97 (?) and remember everyone in the company being asked to read the book "The Innovator's Dilemma", which described exactly this situation - a high end company being overtaken by worse but cheaper competitors that improved year by year until they take the entire market. The point being that the company was extremely aware of what was happening. It was not taken by surprise. But in spite of that, it was still unable to respond.

I think it's a near impossible situation - the status quo is literally something that should not exist given the new market realities. Pivoting is pretty much asking a company to commit seppuku - asking the layers of leadership to basically replace themselves and quit in many cases. Which is pretty much what happens anyway.

And, just like every Unix workstation vendor of the 1990s, they got hit with a perfect storm. They had their hardware being disrupted by x86 really coming into its own as a viable option for higher-end computing at the exact same time that Linux was becoming a serious option for the operating system.

"Literally something that should not exist" is the perfect way of putting it. In 1990, lots of people needed boutique workstation vendors. In 2000, nobody did.