SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - August 5, 2009) -
Ocarina
Networks today announced that Rainmaker Entertainment and Zoic Studios
are the latest customers in the CG animation, post-production and visual
effects (VFX) industry to implement its
ECOsystem
solution to achieve up to 80% reductions in their primary storage
footprint.
The media and entertainment industry is experiencing up to 50% data growth
per year, driven by the adoption of all-digital HD and film workflows and
the move to 3D production. At the same time, there is a growing demand for
online archival storage in response to constant
repurposing of media assets.
Using Ocarina, Rainmaker and Zoic join other leading media and
entertainment companies that have tapped the technology to cost-effectively
deduplicate and compress their multi-tier storage
systems, keeping more data online longer and creating new efficiencies in
artist and animator workflow. By dramatically
optimizing storage, the companies also save on data
center space, power, and cooling for each production or media archive.
"The uptake in interest in Ocarina in the media and entertainment space has
been dramatic and a real validation of the work we put into supporting
post-production data sets. In the last month, we've started more
evaluations, benchmarks and data quality tests in studios and
post-production houses than we have in the last six months. Our wins at
Rainmaker and Zoic confirm that we're solving real technology challenges in
this market," said Dave Withers, vice president of business development at
Ocarina Networks.
Production data from existing Ocarina customers indicates that capital
expense for new storage may drop 70% per production, even when the data is
media file types that are already compressed, and reduce the overall cost
of storage by as much as 80%. Ocarina's solution combines object
deduplication with an industry-specific set of compression algorithms that
can quickly and losslessly
shrink key post-production file types.
Rainmaker and Zoic: Animated about Storage Optimization
Industry leading computer graphics animation house Rainmaker Entertainment
has achieved a 65% capacity savings by deploying Ocarina ECOsystem. With 70
terabytes of live data, growing at 25 terabytes per year, in addition to
many terabytes of archival data, Rainmaker needed to keep more data online
for continued use and reference but simply did not have the necessary
capacity. By leveraging the Ocarina content-aware storage optimization
technology, the animation house now keeps all relevant data online and
accessible to artists and production crews at all times. Instead of
requiring IT to get involved in data retrieval from tape, resulting in long
wait times and reduced productivity, artists can now search for and access
the data in a real-time, self-service capacity.
Award winning digital studio, Zoic Studios was similarly inundated with
data that they needed to keep accessible for artists. After comparing
Ocarina to several other solutions, Zoic ultimately selected Ocarina for
its easy and seamless integration with existing storage systems, in
addition to the ease-of-use for the end-user. By deploying Ocarina they
were able to reduce data by up to 70%, and increase online storage from six
months to two years worth of files.
"Using Ocarina has greatly simplified and consolidated our archive process
-- you just turn it on and it works," said Saker Klippsten, IT manager,
Zoic Studios. "Not only has it increased our nearline storage capacity,
allowing us to keep everything we need online, but also drastically reduced
the amount of time required to manage the archive process and aid artists
in retrieving content from tape. Our artists are more productive, our IT
department has more time to devote to other mission-critical tasks, and the
cost savings achieved has opened up our budget to fund new IT projects."
At least two other major movie studios have experienced similar data
reduction and cost savings as a result of deploying the
Ocarina
ECOsystem. Validated by independent fact-checking analyst firm
TechValidate, those studios report:
-- Space savings of up to 65% on online storage;
-- Support of 1 PB media archive on only 250TB of physical storage;
-- Deployment of a cost-effective nearline archive that significantly
increases operation productivity, while reducing the net price of disk;
-- All storage optimization achieved losslessly with perfect data
integrity.
"Using Ocarina has made it possible and cost-effective for Rainmaker to
maintain an online archive," said Dave Algar, principal data administrator,
Rainmaker. "Any CG animation, post-production or FX studio, small or large,
might benefit from Ocarina's unique data reduction technology because it is
specifically designed to address the growth, performance, and data
availability challenges that are facing our industry."
About Ocarina
Ocarina is a leader in online storage optimization solutions. Organizations
of all sizes use Ocarina's content-aware optimization technology to reduce
their storage footprint and achieve a ten-fold capacity increase on their
current storage systems. Based in San Jose, Calif., Ocarina is
privately-held and financed by leading investors JAFCO Ventures, Kleiner
Perkins Caufield & Byers and Highland Capital Partners. For more
information, visit
www.ocarinanetworks.com
Contact Information: Media Contacts:
Ocarina Networks
Jason Throckmorton or Virginia Zimpel
415-625-8555
ocarina(at)launchsquad(dot)com