And Silicon Graphics is now… SGI

Was that the best it could do? Silicon Graphics International has changed its name to -- SGI. And we thought the company was going to rebrand itself: "Smaller than Sun". Poor Silicon Graphics is big in servers and supercomputers -- or so it insists, with these product lines accounting for half of company turnover. Only, no one knows it. Changing names means people won't think of the company as simply a high-end graphics workstation vendor. But wait -- the Silicon Graphics name won't disappear completely. SGI will retain the brand for its... high-end graphics workstation business. This has something to do with what the experts call "brand flexibility". Changing company names indicates either a special kind of desperation or a marketing department with too much money and too much time on its hands. Silicon Graphics/SGI did not come up with this startling name change all by itself. For this kind of marketing masterpiece, you have to call in the specialists. So take a bow, branding specialists Landor Associates. You deserve every penny SGI are paying you. Now over to Landor boss Clay Timon for his valuable contribution to the English language. "In markets evolving as rapidly as those of graphics workstations and servers, a brand has to be flexible enough to expand into new categories and communicate new messages, while remaining memorable and distinctive enough to stand out from its high tech competition," he said. ®