Colombia. For some years now, animated films for children have ceased to be exclusively for children, with their innovative formats they capture audiences such as teenagers and adults. The successes of the cinema with these films have been great, but they require a monumental technological work that few imagine, their production goes beyond vignettes and caricatures.
The company Animal Logic gained recognition thanks to its work in animated productions such as LEGO the Movie, Matrix, Matrix Reloaded, The Great Gatsby and Happy Feet, the latter winning the Oscar for best animated film in 2007. Creating the effects for these formats requires increasing amounts of processing power.
To start production on a recent film he was working on, Animal Logic, he had to build a data center in just four and a half months.
"The speed of implementation of our data center environments is absolutely essential to our business," said Alex Timbs, IT Director at Animal Logic. "We were looking for a solution of extremely high capacity and density. And we chose Schneider Electric solutions because of their engineering skills and their ability to meet our business needs on time."
Prefabricated modular data centers have a much faster implementation than traditional "brick-built" ones. This is because most of the installation and integration work is done in a controlled factory environment, according to the customer's specifications. Next, the finished, ready-to-use modules dedicated to powering and cooling IT equipment are delivered to the customer's premises, where it is relatively simple to make the power connections and other final connections to get the data center up and running. Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) software is also pre-installed and integrated to improve solution planning and operational performance.
Steve Carlini, Managing Director of Data Center Solutions and Marketing at Schneider Electric, commented, "It's hard to overstate Animal Logic's contributions to the films it has produced. Happy Feet was generated entirely by computer, including six scenes featuring more than 400,000 penguins. For example, in their work they have made simple shots of real life and superimposed computer-generated visual effects, or VFX as they are known in the sector, with surprising results, but to achieve this they require the technology that supports the operation and that's where we come in."
"For example, the use of standardized power and cooling modules, pre-assembled and integrated into data centers, can represent a saving in Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of 30% compared to infrastructures built with the traditional model," said Carlini.
Modules can come in many different shapes and sizes, from rail-based components that fit inside an existing building, to fully autonomous data centers housed in ISO containers, as in the case of Animal Logic.
Schneider Electric also offers ongoing data center support and maintenance, including StruxureOn. It is a cloud monitoring service that provides remote monitoring and troubleshooting 24 hours a day, every day, even from a smartphone.
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