Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) acquires SGI (aka Silicon Graphics), the formerly influential enterprise hardware pioneer turned niche high performance computing player, for $275 million in cash and debt.
"At HPE, we are focused on empowering data-driven organizations," HPE says. "SGI's innovative technologies and services, including its best-in-class big data analytics and high-performance computing solutions, complement HPE's proven datacentre solutions designed to create business insight and accelerate time to value for customers."
Founded in 1981 by Netscape co-founder Jim Clark as a maker of desktop workstations, SGI has been going through a long decline as it failed to beat the likes of Nvidia and Intel. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 before being bought by Rackable Systems on the same year. SGI used to be own the site that now houses the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, before moving to Milpitas, California.
Currently SGI is a specialist in servers, storage and software required for HPC hardware, explaining HPE's interest in the legacy company. One SGI product offering is systems using large memory pools instead of HDDs to run large databases at high speeds.
The acquisition should close in Q1 of HPE's fiscal 2017 following required regulatory approval.