Company
News
Silicon Graphics Announces Real-World
Storage Area Network Installations
Company Solving Massive Data Availability and Storage Challenges
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (December 14, 1998) -- Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE:
SGI) today announced delivery of real-world heterogeneous Storage Area Network (SAN)
solutions that are currently being implemented in business-critical environments.
Real-life experience in building SANs for digital media applications translates into a
time-to-market advantage for those customers who also want to achieve enterprise SAN
benefits such as storage consolidation, centralized storage management and data
availability. Digital FilmWorks, a current digital media SAN customer installation with
image-intensive applications, is realizing the business benefits of SANs.
"While many other vendors have made SAN announcements, most of these are simply
roadmap statements with a few point products," said John "Beau" Vrolyk,
senior vice president, Computer Systems Business Unit, Silicon Graphics. "Silicon
Graphics is already moving through the early adopter stage and is now deploying follow-on
technologies to support the full enterprise feature set. Coupled with the technology
rollout, Silicon Graphics continues to build supporting services, including professional
services, integration partners, interoperability testing, training and support required
for the total SAN solution."
The company is developing enterprise SAN solutions based on its experience with digital
media SANs, its success in deploying data warehousing and decision support solutions, and
its heritage in high-performance, scalable ccNUMA servers. This combination creates
industry-leading storage solutions which focus on consolidation, centralized management,
high data availability, LAN-free backup and overall lower total cost of ownership.
"Dataquest believes that there are several stages to general adoption of Storage
Area Networks, the first being guaranteed compatibility with all other connected devices
and the final being increased data sharing. Media servers offer a complementary
architecture to Storage Area Networks, in that both technologies require file sharing,
data streaming, and storage management expertise. Companies that integrate media server
elements will enhance the mainstream adoption of Storage Area Networks," stated
Thomas Lahive, senior analyst with Dataquest.
To date, the industry segments with the most immediate need for SAN solutions mirror
Silicon Graphics' core customers, including oil and gas, entertainment, government and
scientific imaging, data warehousing, pharmaceutical, and pre-press. Within these market
segments, digital media applications in particular have been generating the demand for SAN
solutions. These applications are driven by time-to-market demand for heterogeneous file
sharing, which cannot be satisfied in traditional client/server implementations. Digital
media customers are beginning to implement Silicon Graphics solutions for the reduced
total cost of ownership and increased data availability features required of an enterprise
SAN.
"Film image data is the lifeblood of high-end post production. Ensuring data
availability and integrity is essential to business survival," said Steve Russell,
marketing manager, film imaging products for Philips DVS. "Our applications demand
flexibility, so ways to consolidate storage, reduce storage management overhead, and
ensure that vital film image data is safeguarded are critical. Our customers look to
Silicon Graphics and its partners to provide leading technologies such as Fibre
Channel-based switched fabrics to address the requirements of digital media and enterprise
SANs."
Pricing and Availability
Silicon Graphics will offer a complete Fibre Channel fabric infrastructure for an up to
sixteen device configuration starting at $56,000 U.S. list in the first quarter of 1999.
Silicon Graphics will offer the system, host bus adapter, switch or hub, Fibre Channel
RAID/JBOD, tape solutions, High Availability software, storage management software, and
Silicon Graphics' professional services. All of these components and others are also
available from Silicon Graphics' partners today.
Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a leading supplier of visual computing and high-performance
systems. The company offers the broadest range of products in the industry -- from low-end
desktop workstations to servers and high-end supercomputers. Key industries include
communications, energy, entertainment, government, manufacturing and sciences. Silicon
Graphics and its subsidiaries have offices throughout the world and corporate headquarters
in Mountain View, California.
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