Arc Productions (now called Jam Filled Entertainment *1/2017) currently supports some 260 artists working on a full production pipeline of theatrical features, television, DVDs, shorts, and game cinematics.

An hour of downtime that keeps artists from working productively can cost a studio thousands of dollars and very quickly wreak havoc on project budgets, quality, and schedules. Terry Dale, vice president of Systems and Infrastructure at Arc Productions in Toronto, says that’s why keeping crew working is job number one for his IT team. “Our studio has built its reputation on delivering highest-quality productions—on time and on budget. Our challenge in IT is to provide the high-performance, highly reliable and flexible infrastructure that keeps toolsets and artists working—without making technology over investments that would add undue costs to client projects or price us out of competitive bids.”

“Two years ago we made a strategic shift in our approach to storage, moving to an Avere Systems Edge-Core Storage Architecture that lets us put performance where it’s most needed, without overbuying expensive capacity just to gain spindles and speed. Using Avere, we better understand existing data flows and have new options for optimal data placement moving forward. We can store data anywhere (for economy or security), then just drop in an Avere Edge filer wherever and whenever we need more performance—in front of our render farm or artist workstations, at remote workplaces, or as a gateway to the cloud. No other storage architecture gives us as many options to store data, accelerate I/O, and control costs. We’re keeping crew working productively even as we’ve gained significant cost efficiencies to help the studio deliver on project objectives, every time.”

Challenge: Accelerate Rendering, Improve Responsiveness to Artist Workstations

Read the full case study here:  Rendering and Productivity  Case Study