Visual effects victory for Customer profile TV blockbuster

Leading visual effects company in flourishes in Hollywood and successfully works on blockbuster with global Company Pixomondo IT infrastructure Industry media and Communications Country Germany Employees 670 Website pixomondo.com

Business need Pixomondo needs highly available IT to produce visual effects. It looked for a partner to develop an IT infrastructure for continued success in the world of TV and movies.

Solution Pixomondo uses a complete solution, including Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers, and Dell storage, and switches.

Benefits • Game of Thrones project is a success using Dell PowerEdge servers • Business drives growth with up to 20 per cent more computing density • Pixomondo stays agile to deliver excellent customer service • Staff maximise efficiency with highly available IT worldwide • Company sees future success in “Due to the lower energy costs of our Dell Dell hosted and cloud services

PowerEdge R620 servers, we can afford to Solutions featured run up to 20 per cent more servers in our • End-User Computing • IT Support Services infrastructure. It means our server farm can • Networking • Server support even more customer projects.” • Storage Christian Vogt, Chief Operating Officer, Pixomondo Pixomondo is a leading visual effects company. It provides post-production services for cinema, TV, commercials, interactive media, apps and live events. Established in 2001, the firm has 13 offices across Canada, China, Germany, the United Kingdom and the .

Its work has supported many Hollywood The Pixomondo infrastructure now blockbusters, winning Pixomondo an includes an extensive range of Oscar in the category of Best Visual Dell servers, storage, networking Effects for its collaboration on Martin technology, workstations and desktop Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret. It has also systems. The large number of Dell™ edited the visual effects for the second PowerEdge™ servers, including R410, series of the TV hit Game of Thrones. R510 and R710 models with ® Xeon® processors, has grown with “We’re always The company employs creative people the expansion of the Pixomondo across the world. It has built a global IT business. The company has also added working under infrastructure to support staff wherever pressure to hit they are and in whatever time zone. This flexibility is at the heart of Pixomondo’s Technology at Work deadlines, but success, enabling the business to respond quickly to the changing Services Dell finds a way to needs of customers and deliver visual Dell IT Support-Services effects to tight timescales. Because of support us and make – Dell ProSupport™ with Next its global infrastructure, Pixomondo Business Day Onsite Service things possible. I needs high performance IT. In many ways, its requirements are simple. The Hardware don’t have to worry.” business wants standardised solutions Dell™ PowerEdge™ R620, R710, that are reliable and easy to manage, R510 and R410 servers with and responsive services that ensure Christian Vogt, Intel® Xeon® processors Chief Operating Officer, solutions are delivered fast, with support Pixomondo arriving quickly. Dell PowerEdge C6100 servers with Intel Xeon processors Firm establishes winning IT Dell EqualLogic PS6510E partnership, gains business agility storage arrays Pixomondo is delivering success and Dell PowerVault™ MD1000 driving growth with the support of direct attached storage Dell solutions. The relationship with Dell has existed for many years, since Dell PowerVault NX3100 Pixomondo decided to switch its IT to networked attached storage a ® Windows®-based platform. Dell PowerConnect™ 2824, 6248 and 8024F switches Pixomondo’s goal was to find an IT Dell switches partner with which it could build a close working relationship. Christian Vogt, ™ T5500 Chief Operating Officer at Pixomondo, workstations with Intel Xeon says: “I can buy computers anywhere, processors but with Dell we feel like more than desktops and 3D customers – we feel like partners. listens to us, understands what we’re doing and offers us solutions.”

2 Dell PowerEdge C hyperscale servers “Due to the lower energy costs of our with Intel Xeon processors, taking Dell PowerEdge R620 servers, we can advantage of the machines’ high afford to run up to 20 per cent more density and excellent scalability. Vogt servers in our infrastructure. It means says: “Because of their high CPU power our server farm can support even more and small form factor, Dell PowerEdge customer projects.” C hyperscale servers are very attractive. We like the fact they can be easily Pixomondo standardises on expanded with graphics cards to high performance support (GPU) The organisation can also meet the based visual rendering.” growing demands for data storage using its flexible storage infrastructure Game of Thrones project completed from Dell. Storage requirements successfully with responsive support continue to increase, with the movie Because the relationship works well, Hugo Cabret needing more than 3.1 Pixomondo could meet the urgent petabytes of capacity alone. Pixomondo needs of the makers of worldwide is meeting these requirements through TV hit series Game of Thrones. There Dell EqualLogic PS6510E storage arrays, was a change to the work stream Dell PowerVault™ MD1000 direct and Pixomondo suddenly faced new attached storage arrays and Dell challenges for the visual effects work PowerVault NX3100 network attached it was doing for the fantasy TV series. storage – linked with 10-gigabit The news coincided with an event in iSCSI connections. For protection, Germany, attended by , Pixomondo is replicating data between to showcase the recently launched storage arrays at different offices around 12th-generation Dell PowerEdge server the world. Vogt says: “Because of the family. It was a Thursday night, and simplicity of our Dell EqualLogic and Pixomondo placed an order for 39 of Dell PowerVault arrays, we can manage the Dell PowerEdge R620 servers, each our global storage infrastructure with with two six-core Intel Xeon CPUs just two storage administrators. Our and 32 gigabytes (GB) of memory. capacity continues to grow, but our The following Monday morning, Dell labour overheads remain constant, shipped the entire order to Pixomondo’s helping us keep down costs.” studio in Frankfurt. “We’re always working under pressure to hit deadlines, In addition, Dell makes sure that but Dell finds a way to support us and IT personnel are given support to make things possible. I don’t have to maximise the performance of the worry. The technology arrives, we enter storage from day one. For example, it into our pipeline, and we continue the main IT team in Germany attended working. This is very important to me a Dell EqualLogic training workshop and my business,” says Vogt. organised by Dell, where it saw how it could use the built-in software for tasks Business supports growth with up to such as snap-shotting and replication. 20 per cent more computing density The company can deliver more projects Business guarantees network stability with its existing environment as a result The company helps ensure of implementing Dell PowerEdge reliable network performance 12th-generation servers. By deploying across its infrastructure using Dell Dell PowerEdge R620 servers, which PowerConnect™ 2824, 6248 and 8024F include Intel Xeon processors and switches. They deliver the speed and offer up to 24 dual in-line memory performance on which the company’s modules (DIMMs) for computing- global infrastructure depends. Plus, intensive tasks, the company has Pixomondo is now looking at deploying lowered power consumption across its Dell Force10 switching technology. server farm. As a result of the savings, Vogt says: “We have standardised on Pixomondo can now operate more Dell PowerConnect switches because servers in the environment. Vogt says: of their reliability and performance.

3 Looking ahead, we will be evaluating Business ensures highly available IT Dell Force10 switching technology for with worldwide support enhanced performance capabilities.” The company also knows that Dell’s global support is helping maintain Employees collaborate worldwide the effective collaboration among with ease offices. Pixomondo works with Dell A visitor to any Pixomondo office will ProSupport™ to provide high availability see that its personnel are collaborating across the infrastructure. And with Dell across continents and meeting ProSupport with Next Business Day timelines using Dell client technology. Onsite Service anywhere in the world, Employees rely on Dell Precision™ the company can quickly address any T5500 workstations with Intel Xeon issues. “Dell ProSupport gives us the processors and many use Alienware support we need to run our business,” desktops and monitors for working says Vogt. in 3D. Dell Precision technology has become the technology of choice Company sees future in hosted and for many visual effects and post- cloud services production studios worldwide. And Vogt also knows that he has the Pixomondo is no exception, valuing support of Dell as Pixomondo comes the workstations’ professional-grade to a crucial point in the development processors and graphics options. of its IT infrastructure. The business As with all its other Dell solutions, is looking to relocate servers and Pixomondo is reassured that a Dell storage to a data centre with personnel Precision will arrive working from virtual workstations. anywhere in the world and still deliver As a result, the company is currently the same high-quality performance. talking to Dell about moving its IT to Vogt says: “We’re working with Dell a Dell data centre in Germany, and Precision workstations in all of our from there delivering IT across IP offices worldwide. Our employees like connections to offices globally. “We the high performance and reliability of see Dell data centres as an exciting Dell Precision technology.” He knows proposition for Pixomondo to host its that when one office closes for the IT. This also gives us the opportunity to day, staff can continue working on a move to cloud-based services, without project in an office on the other side risking data security or secrecy,” says of the world without disruption. “We Vogt. It would take the agility of the have offices in 13 locations on three business to a new level and deliver continents, but all sites have to work significant savings to the business. “We together on the same project to meet see our business continuing to grow our deadlines,” he says. with Dell as our IT partner because Dell provides us with end-to-end solutions,” says Vogt.

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Availability and terms of Dell Services vary by region. For more information, visit dell.com/servicedescriptions 4 © October, 2012 Dell Inc. Dell is a trademark of Dell Inc. Intel and Intel Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries. This case study is for informational purposes only. DELL MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS CASE STUDY. Reference number: 10011206