Ocarina today announced that they’ve picked up a new customer for their storage optimization system in Zoic Studios. We’ve talked about the magic black-box Ocarina solution before, and this press release comes with some actual numbers from customers:
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.
Ocarina is on the show floor here at SIGGRAPH, so I hope to get some more details for you. Read the full press release after the break.
MEDIA AND ENTERTAINMENT GIANTS TURN TO OCARINA FOR ONLINE STORAGE OPTIMIZATION
Rainmaker, Zoic and Other Leading Production Studios Achieve Up To 80%
Reduction in Storage CostsAugust 5, 2009 – San Jose, Calif. – 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
