“And the Winner Is…”: FastSoft Helps Animal Logic Speed Content
For design, animation and visual effects, Hollywood looks to Australia, and the ground-breaking creativity of Animal Logic. The company’s credits include Happy Feet, 300, Moulin Rouge, The Matrix, Babe, Hero and House of Flying Daggers.
“We started off doing TV commercials and then did our first visual effects project in 1997 on Nicolas Cage’s Faceoff,” says Animal Logic IT Manager Alex Timbs. “Today we have prominent effects and animation clients all over the world.”
Much of the company’s animation and visual effects projects originate in the US. With its work in animation and VFX increasing, and growing in complexity Animal Logic found the size of its digital output files getting larger and larger. In particular, more data was being transferred across the Web for International jobs.
“On projects like Happy Feet, the requirements for HD Reviews meant very large clips of animation had to be sent daily,” Timbs says. “During emergency scenarios we might have to transfer on very tight time frames for weeks at a time.”
Timbs’ team decided to seek a faster means of sending data and a better way to let clients browse files on its FTP server in Australia. The company considered increasing its bandwidth capacity, and looked at WAN optimization solutions that might improve data transfer speeds over its VPN. While weighing the pros and cons of each, they found the FastSoft E Series and determined it could deliver the best mix of speed, simplicity and savings.
Less Overhead Down Under
Since installing E Series, Animal Logic has seen FTP transfer times decrease by 5 to 10 times. A centralized solution has improved bandwidth utilization worldwide, without having to coordinate or install two-sided technology solutions.
“FastSoft’s price point made the solution quite attractive in a plug-and-play manner,” Timbs says. “It’s
helping to ensure that our clients’ FTP experience is the best it can be.”
Along with increasing transfer speeds, the FastSoft E Series proved the optimal solution in terms of overall cost-of-ownership:
Saves IT staff resources: To optimize transfer speeds during periods of peak bandwidth utilization, the Animal Logic IT team would create multiple FTP streams, a process that helps keep data moving but requires dedicated resources.
“With this approach, engineering had to watch over more streams to make sure everything went
through,” says Timbs. “With FastSoft, we can continue to use a single FTP stream. There are much
better uses of our time than keeping an eye on FTP software.”
No increased bandwidth costs: During “crunch times” on client projects, the Animal Logic IT team
sometimes considered increasing its network bandwidth. The FastSoft E Series has significantly
reduced the need.
“Obtaining dedicated bandwidth can be a daunting proposition,” Timbs says. “With FastSoft we can
make much better use of our existing connectivity to meet client needs as well as for our own email
and Internet access.”
Rapid return on investment: By keeping the company from having to increase its investment in
bandwidth, the FastSoft E Series pays for itself very rapidly.
“It’s costly and takes time to add significant bandwidth,” says Timbs. “FastSoft has allowed us to
increase the performance of our FTP services while keeping us from having to make a major
investment in additional capacity.”
Only seamless, single-sided solution: “We wanted to improve the performance of our FTP
services without having to manage a complex multi-sided solution,” says Timbs. “With FastSoft there’s no need for lots of infrastructure and we don’t have to manage two ends of a solution. We just set it and forget it. Software-based solutions might ultimately have their place for caching, but for now, a single FastSoft appliance is a cost-effective way of improving our FTP service while also negating the need to increase bandwidth.”
“With E Series installed, Animal Logic is well positioned to handle spikes in FTP activity without having to manage multiple FTP streams or add network capacity,” Timbs says. “It has definitely proven to be a quick, cost-effective way to improve content delivery and our customers’ experience.
