Q&A With SGI's Anthony Robbins: Washington Goes Hollywood

Formerly known as Silicon Graphics, SGI provides the digital-computing technology to create the dazzling, 3D graphics imagery in hit movies such as "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring." And SGI is bringing these technologies to the computer screens of federal agencies as well, given that such demand is increasing among U.S. defense, intelligence, law-enforcement and science customers. This and other product innovations have helped fuel the recent success that vendor SGI and its VAR/integrator partners have enjoyed in the government marketplace. Since Sept. 11, 2001, roughly 35 percent of SGI's overall $1.3 billion annual revenue comes from the federal government/defense sector. In years past, government/defense has accounted for no more than one-quarter of the company's overall revenue.

SGI's success stems from a two-decades-long record as a proven government player. The company was first funded in 1982 under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grant. The mission: Take modern, custom-integrated circuit technology and use it to create cost-effective, high-performance graphics systems. This DARPA grant formed the basis of SGI as a company, not to mention a revolution in computer graphics that paved the way for technologies such as the Silicon Graphics Geometry Engine, a graphics-processing unit that has been sold by federal VARs/integrators, such as Riverside, Calif.-based Federal Edge, Manassas, Va.-based Government Micro Resources and Los Angeles-based Northrop Grumman. Today, DARPA and SGI are still highly involved with high-productivity computing systems that are mission-critical to the success of our national defense. Now under way: a DARPA program for SGI to create economically viable, higher-performing computing systems to elevate IT productivity for all federal-government agencies by 2010.

SGI's top executive over federal sales, Anthony K. Robbins, was happy to discuss this and other initiatives in a recent, exclusive interview with VARBusiness. As president over federal sales and senior vice president of North American field operations for SGI, Robbins manages a staff of more than 1,000 professionals in 36 offices, including the more than 300 employees that work for the federal-sales section. There are currently at least 60 VARs/integrators working with SGI on federal-government contracts. Robbins joined SGI in 1990, after spending four years at Falcon Microsystems, a leading partner of Apple Computer, in various sales positions covering Department of Defense contracts. (Falcon was eventually sold to Chantilly, Va.-based GTSI.)

Robbins earned a bachelor's in marketing in 1982 from Jacksonville State University, where the 6-foot, 4-inch athlete played small forward on the basketball team. In 1998, he was named the university's Alumnus of the Year. He resides in Columbia, Md., with his wife and four children. In his recent conversation with VARBusiness, he elaborates on how a need for speed in computing systems--and quality performance--among government customers is translating to greater opportunity for SGI and its VAR/integrator channel partners.

VB: Your track record in providing solutions that translate into Hollywood box-office successes is making its mark in government sales, too. How did that come about?
Robbins: Our Silicon Graphics systems for DARPA are also used to create the greatest special effects in Hollywood movies. The movies are moving away from analog and going to digital. This is being used that way at all levels of government. The Army's simulation-command technologies are just like those used in the movies--the real-time simulation of graphics and animation are one in the same. It's not just defense and security. It's health care, social services, scientific research and education, transportation, energy and the environment, among others. Our VARs are getting a big piece of this business. We're actually one of the largest media companies in the world, when you think about it.

VB: You also recently announced that you'd be supporting a modular supercomputer for the U.S. Army to develop engineering programs for high-profile combat designs, such as the Comanche helicopter and unmanned combat-armed rotorcraft. How can this sort of project expand opportunities for you and your VARs?
Robbins: We're providing helicopter and fast jet simulation. The pilots in Iraq were trained on Silicon Graphics computers. We work with our VARs on all kinds of solutions like these, whether for "fixed-wing" planes or rotary vehicles, which are the helicopters. This should expand because of the need for newer and better preparation as the potential for global conflict becomes smaller, more regionalized and less predictable. Instead of preparing for a big world war, you have to plan for a smaller operation like that in Afghanistan or Iraq. In every case where we're involved with that, our channel partners are taking part. The partner who is successful is the one who understands the mission and the doctrine that is practiced by the agency customer.

VB: The DOD recently awarded to SGI a $26 million [deal] to deliver what's being called the High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP) within the next four years. On the surface, it doesn't sound like a ton of money. But how significantly could this expand?
Robbins: Very significantly. The DOD has four major shared-resource centers. With this, we're upgrading two--one in Vicksburg, Miss., and the other at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. By next year, they'll likely need to upgrade the other two, which are Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., and Stennis Space Center, Miss. Underneath those centers, they have distributor sites--labs and agencies that work with these resource centers. So there are 20 distribution sites where money is being established to work with us through our channel partners as SGI becomes a major supplier. There are literally thousands of users for this kind of equipment.

And that's not all: Higher education participates here, too. Universities play a major role in developing the software that is important for these centers. The University of Colorado, for example, works closely with the Air Force. About 70 percent of the funds used to buy high-end computers in the education marketplace come from federal funding. They'll be used for what are now top-priority needs, such as border control and biochemical analysis, all of which are hot topics because of Homeland Defense.

VB: What are the biggest changes you've seen in the government customer in recent years?
Robbins: One of the largest changes is a dismantling of the perception that they're going to do everything themselves. That they're the ones who are going to build the systems--invent the technology and put everything together. Now, as opposed to when I came into the government-channel marketplace 20 years ago, we're seeing that the government customer is relying more and more on partners, integrators and VARs. We estimate that they're doing this for 80 to 90 percent of the technologies they need. They're acting more like a program or project manager now to oversee the implementation of their projects.

This means our channel relationship is more important than ever. Our VARs and integrators help us understand about the mission of every individual federal-agency customer, and, in return, we make sure we remain flexible enough to help our channel partners deliver solutions to those agencies. Doing this is far more complex than it was 20 years ago because there are so many more people involved with the process.

VB: How has this impacted your needs when it comes to VARs?
Robbins: Our VARs are now far removed from what they once were--box-pushers with a product and a quote. Today, they are subject-matter experts for the kinds of problems out there that need to be resolved. That's why we spend so much time and money in training our government channel partners, to better serve customers.

VB: What, specifically, do you provide when it comes to training?
Robbins: We launched a curriculum-based training program in July of last year called "Pact University." It offers a comprehensive training set, which results in our VARs earning professional designations within their focus areas. This sets them apart from other VARs they compete with. We focus on this significantly in three major areas: sales, technology and industry training. Each different segment involves, typically, three to five days of training per year. So we're asking for no more than three weeks of training, and it can be done via "Web-inars," online. Or they can take part in sessions at one of our regional locations, or at our headquarters. For sales training, we hire external sales consultants. We provide the same level of training in sales for our partners as we do for our own sales team. For technology training, we take the SGI internal expert executives on our specific solutions, and we train our partners. We depend greatly on our partners' knowledge about the technologies of our solutions, so this is critical. Lastly, with the industrial training, we need to make sure that our VAR/integrator partners have the subject-matter expertise to deal with our government customers. If we're selling weather-forecasting communications, for example, for the many DOD labs we deal with, we have to know that our channel partners know more than simply that Unix does real-time computing. They have to know why the real-time computing demand problem exists, why it's imperative in flight-testing, and command and control.

VB: It looks like a major opportunity for sales expansion will emerge from the current work you're doing with DARPA. Your marching order is to create "stronger, faster, better" but still economically viable computing systems to increase tech productivity for all federal-government agencies by 2010. Tell us more about that--and where VARs fit in.
Robbins: Sure. The government is now redefining high-performance computing. The result will be a new standard, a new baseline of computers with vendors such as SGI delivering solutions. Somewhere in the 2008 to 2010 time frame, we expect to be delivering computers that will do much more work, and allow scientists and engineers to spend most of their time performing actual science and engineering [work]--instead of doing part-time systems work. They spend so much time trying to make their algorithms work with their systems, or their software work with their systems. The new world order, according to DARPA, will be to eliminate this to allow more opportunity for engineering and scientific breakthroughs. To support this, we'll need great performance from our channel partners.

VB: Will this increase the number of VARs and integrators you use, up from 60? Or simply create more opportunity for the estimated 60 VARs and integrators you already have?
Robbins: Both, we expect. We'll add partners, most likely, and allow the existing ones to grow their revenues. But we're not going to expand partners just because we have a new product line. We would, however, expand partners if they provide to us a new sales-access point that we don't enjoy now. Our current partners make good margins on our equipment. We're interested in protecting our arrangements with them. We're not interested in dirtying up the channel in an effort to sign up more partners.

VB: For two straight years, you've earned VARBusiness' coveted five-star rating in the Partner Programs Guide in three categories---systems, storage and peripherals. That was companywide, however. How have your channel partners in government sales gained from the result?
Robbins: We've taken on many initiatives within the federal-sales sector to improve the way we deliver these highly regarded solutions through our channel partners. We expanded our business offerings, facilitated teaming arrangements between our VARs and integrators, added a business-development resource devoted to the government channel space and made it easier for our channel partners to go to market. SGI focuses now on several key industry areas, and the federal government is involved in all of them: energy market space, such as oil and gas; manufacturing; media, such as entertainment; and government, of course.

In all of these industry areas, we've been focusing more than ever on who the customers are and what their business problems are. We take from that and put together a sales and marketing program for the channel partner. We've been generating the sales and promotional materials that better allow our partners to participate. We design and develop programs that are more reseller-friendly. We do a lot of the work for them, by creating shows and events that put them "in the booth" with us. We just did this in Washington, D.C., on the theme of Homeland Defense. We've done it for DOD-related projects as well, in addition to summits on high-performance computing and weather solutions.