New Hardware Broadens Streaming Server Market

In early 2000, SGI spun off its MediaBase streaming product into a company called Kasenna, which handles enterprise streaming solutions using RealNetworks, QuickTime and MPEG-1 and –2 video technologies. Louise Ledeen, senior market development manager for SGI's Media Industries group, said that SGI will sell the new servers with the MediaBase systems. She pointed to some success stories in the education market, as well as in the corporate and government spaces.

During last month's IBD conference in Amsterdam, SGI showed off products for the video on demand (VOD) market, too. With partners like Minvera, Mindport and ThirdSpace, SGI demonstrated VOD solutions using the MediaBase product.

SGI's Origin 300 server adds to the Origin line, as the mid-range counterpart to the Origin 3000. The Origin 300 base module holds two or four MIPS 64-bit processors, up to 4GB of memory and two disk drives. Optional components add I/O bandwidth, high-throughput Total Performance 900 (TP900) storage arrays or additional system bandwidth for scalability up to 32 processors in a single, shared-memory system.

"It extends from the high-end SGI 3000 introduced last summer," Snell said. The Origin 300 is built in a modular fashion, so customers can add modules as they see fit to upgrade more memory, storage or CPU power. Snell compared it to an entertainment center — you don't buy a complete system every time you want to get a new DVD player, for example. He said the 300, with its lower entry price, is ideal for mid-range applications, like departmental servers, or for companies just starting out. The older 3000 will still be sold as the high-end solution.

According to Snell, the Origin 300 can do 3,600 to 4,000 hours of VOD per rack, where some competitors can just achieve 100 hours per rack. A basic modular system can achieve 250 simultaneous streams with 3Mbps throughput in a $30,000 unit. The Origin 300 comes with two processors, starting at about $24,000, while a more fully configured system with 32 processors, 32GB of memory and over a terabyte of storage sells for about $500,000.

"The 300 is much more channel-friendly," Snell said. "There's a 'snap together' approach that's understood by resellers, so it's easy to do an entry level package that a VAR or OEM can sell."

Snell said SGI "blows away" newly released server products from competitors Sun (SunFire), HP (Keystone rp8400) and IBM (Regatta p690 server). In press materials, SGI calls the Origin 300 the "most powerful high performance UNIX computer at any price point."

"Our creative and technical customers tend to have two major constraints: how much money they have in the budget, and how much space they have in the computer room," said Jan Silverman, senior vice president of marketing at SGI. "Within those constraints, they want the most powerful system they can get. SGI packs more power into less space for less money than general enterprise systems from Sun, HP or IBM."

Snell said the competition is focusing on the enterprise and e-business rather than on pure high performance computing. "Furthermore, HP and Compaq are focused internally [because of the pending merger], so there are very angry customers in the world now. I'm encouraging our sales reps to go out to lunch [with their customers]," he joked.

SGI's image as a high-priced computing platform vendor might be a drawback in some market circles, however. SGI has been a staple in the high-end workstation market among engineers, graphics design professionals and special effects artists, and even for broadcast graphics.

But on the server side, Snell said companies should consider the total cost of ownership when looking at, say, Linux machines. "The total cost of ownership [for SGI servers] is much lower than for other high performance computers on the market, like streaming appliances. There you have low hardware costs but the TCO goes up. They're harder to manage, require more space and don't perform as well per unit," he said.