Silicon Graphics have just announced their Q1 2009 financial results. Revenue and operating expenses are both down compared to Q4 2008, but are both up compared to Q1 2008.

Pro-forma results though show a loss of $7 million for Q1 2009, compared to a loss o $3 million for Q4 2008 and $3.8 million for Q1 2008.

With Sun’s recent financial results as well, it’s clear that this quarter is a less than stellar one for R&D heavy tech firms. The real test will be to see how both Sun and SGI perform in the next quarter, as the knock on effects of the credit crisis really start to bite.

With the launch of VUE and good sales of the Oracle datawarehouse solution based on Altix 450s, I think Silicon Graphics could make some good sales in the next quarter. An upcoming restructuring of the Global Developer Program and the continued push to get ISVs and IHVs on board is really going to help here – and, to be honest, it’s something they should have been doing years ago.

The lack of focus on large scale database systems for business basically meant Silicon Graphics handed the datacentre on a plate to Sun, who stepped in with the E10k and the awesome F15k.

You can also find an entire transcript of the conference call online at http://seekingalpha.com/article/104042-silicon-graphics-q1-2009-earnings-call-transcript

After Y2K was a comic started by Nitrozac and Snaggy way way back … before Y2K in fact. Sadly it’s no longer being updated, but the archives are still available on the Joy Of Tech website.

The pinnacle of the entire AY2K comic (for me at least, anyway) was when the survivors of the Y2K disaster tried to rebuilt computing using the humble abacus – leading to Abacus World Expo!

And the comic that made me laugh out loud was this one:

You can view the full page here – I can recommend reading from the beginning, it’s good stuff.

He loves his Silicon Graphics Octane. Found this fantastic old SGI promotional video on YouTube, where Steve Jobs shares his love for the Octane.

Admittedly this was when he was CEO at Pixar – it’s not like it was last week or anything. Still worth a chuckle though.

And it’s interesting to note that WETA Digital were still using Silicon Graphics Octanes years later for effects in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The press releases are out, and Silicon Graphics has now officially launched it’s Vue suite. And very interesting it all looks too. It reminds me a lot of VRML on steroids, and I’m looking forward to getting some more details on how the visualisation copes with bandwidth limits as well as varying display resolutions on the remote devices.

Here’s the video from SGI introducing Vue and it’s associated technologies:

Check out some of the images of Vue in action:

Visual data mashups – in this case, command and control activities. SGI say:

Silicon Graphics FusionVUE™ – FusionVUE™ dynamically integrates any kind of information in any combination from any source and presents information via an intuitive, contextual and 3-dimensional VUEspace™ environment.

Or global collaboration. This example shows:

Silicon Graphics VUE™ – Product design teams collaborate across the globe for everything from daily interaction to company-wide design reviews. Colleagues around the globe can view and interact with 3D product models, simulations and product plans, while videoconferencing within the same 3D viewing environment.

On a related note, it’s nice to see the return of the Cube and the old Silicon Graphicslogos on the main press release. Head over there for some more pictures and details of the Vue suite.

The Wall Street Journal has a short piece about a new move from Silicon Graphics into providing software solutions to graphics manipulation problems.

Apparently SGI are going to be launching a toolset called Vue that allows users to remotely manipulate and share images and data, bypassing the need for specialist desktop machines. Sounds like a natural progression for a company that can boast the largest Single System Image (SSI) machines on the planet – thin clients and shove the data processing back into the data centre.

Anyone thinking this sounds a bit like ‘Cloud Computing’ or even ‘Sofware As A Service (SAAS)’ would be right on the money.

You can find a more detailed article at http://www.itexaminer.com/silicon-graphics-moves-into-software-market.aspx