Mexico. NetApp and DreamWorks Animation renewed their strategic alliance and co-engineering partnership. NetApp will remain DreamWorks' cloud data service provider, and with the support of NetApp solutions, both on-premises and in the cloud, the studio will continue to evolve its hybrid cloud environment to ensure greater productivity, flexibility and agility.
With the release of its latest animated feature Ruby Gillman, Krakens and Mermaids: Meet the Gillmans, DreamWorks Animation celebrates more than 25 years of pushing the boundaries of both animation and the technologies it uses to bring innovative films to audiences around the world.
From the beginning, NetApp has provided the studio with state-of-the-art solutions to manage its growing production demands and data complexity. In addition, NetApp's joint engineering partnership with DreamWorks brings together engineers from both organizations to solve real-world engineering problems focused on optimizing workflows in a hybrid cloud environment while reducing latency.
"We have worked closely with DreamWorks Animation to enable the studio's digital transformation journey and accelerate its growth with NetApp's product portfolio and the innovations resulting from our co-engineering efforts," said Oscar Anzola, general manager, NetApp Latam. "NetApp's All Flash Array solutions were the foundation of the hybrid storage needed to handle the complex data requirements of production, and simplified workflows for Ruby Gillman's giant character model, so animators focused on creativity, not capacity management."
Technology advancements resulting from the NetApp-DreamWorks partnership include:
- Improved performance through NetApp AFF in the DreamWorks high-performance computing environment and the ability to tier data more efficiently using NetApp FabricPool and NetApp StorageGrid.
Greater agility when extending applications to the cloud using Azure NetApp Files and NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, while expanding geographic reach to support distributed resources.
- Decrease latency and reduce data center footprint with NetApp ONTAP systems using NetApp All Flash Arrays for energy and rack space efficiency.
"In 2018, we went from being a NetApp customer to engaging with them as a valued partner who combined the best of both companies to accelerate our digital transformation," said Bill Ballew, Chief Technology Officer, DreamWorks Animation. "Unlike many other companies that simply rely on data, DreamWorks' actual end product is entirely composed of data. In fact, we generate up to a petabyte of data for each film, and we couldn't bring the imaginative storytelling of our animated films to life without the world-class data management services that NetApp provides."
Together, NetApp and DreamWorks Animation work to continually evolve the tools and techniques needed to raise the bar for visual storytelling for every studio film. NetApp provides DreamWorks Animation with innovative technologies to manage the massive amount of data generated in production, while balancing the performance, flexibility, and cost of data storage.
