SGI has reported it’s Q2 results for 2010, and there’s some interesting figures that show they are poised to really make the most of their technology in the next few quarters.

Revenue is up to over $90m but SGI still posted a loss of $23m. The last few quarters have been spent consolidating operations and reducing costs, so the loss isn’t as bad as it has been.

A quick aside on one of the quirks of the HPC market. Rules mean that SGI can’t book revenue from HPC installations until they’ve been qualified, and if it’s a multi-year deal they have to book those revenues across the year. This always makes the business look a lot more shaky than it is, which is why they also report non-GAAP figures, which get around this.

According to this, revenues were up at just over $150m with a profit of just over $2m. According to details on the call, SGI are gunning for over $500m in sales this year.

The new Altix UV systems have a lot of promise. Now that Oracle have completed their Sun merger, looking at Sun’s future roadmap their involvement in HPC – both at the hardware and software level – looks doubtful.

This leaves a nice gap for SGI to exploit, and at the lower end HP and Dell don’t have much to offer apart from clusters. With new products and a server market that’s starting to pick up, SGI are well positioned to do well this year.

You can read the full details here.

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