NetApp renews deal with DreamWorks Animation despite recent film flop

NetApp has solidified its enduring collaboration with DreamWorks Animation, encompassing co-engineering initiatives and an expanded role as the preferred cloud services provider. This partnership, spanning more than two decades, initially began with NetApp serving as an on-premises supplier and subsequently evolved to include support for DreamWorks Animation’s transition to a hybrid cloud infrastructure.

DreamWorks Animation, founded in 1994 as part of DreamWorks Pictures and later becoming a subsidiary of NBCUniversal in 2016, has been at the forefront of the animation industry. The studio, co-founded by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, has consistently pushed the boundaries of creativity in animated filmmaking.

Gabrielle Boko, Chief Marketing Officer at NetApp, emphasized the close collaboration between NetApp and DreamWorks Animation, stating, “We’ve worked in lockstep with DreamWorks Animation to enable the studio’s digital transformation journey and accelerate its growth with NetApp’s product portfolio and the innovations resulting from our co-engineering efforts.”

Animated movies today heavily rely on intricate special effects, demanding vast amounts of data. The creation process involves hundreds of artists designing and producing scenes, with an animated film often comprising billions of files. This data needs to be seamlessly stored, accessible to artists at various workstations, utilized in rendering processes, and archived for long-term storage.

Bill Ballew, Chief Technology Officer at DreamWorks Animation, highlighted the unique nature of the studio’s data-centric output, noting, “Unlike many other businesses that simply rely on data, DreamWorks’ actual end product is completely composed of data. In fact, we generate up to a petabyte of data for each film.”

To address these complex data challenges, DreamWorks Animation utilizes NetApp’s on-premises solutions, including ONTAP AFF (All-Flash FAS) A900 arrays, ONTAP FAS 9000 hybrid arrays, E-Series SAN arrays, SolidFire all-flash arrays, StorageGRID object storage, FabricPool, FlexCache, and FlexGroup for data access acceleration.

The hybrid cloud environment adopted by DreamWorks Animation facilitates infrastructure expansion without the need for constructing new data centers. Key components of this environment include Astra and Astra Trident, Cloud Checkr, Spot, Azure NetApp Files, and Cloud Volumes ONTAP.

One of DreamWorks Animation’s recent productions is “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” an animated movie with a production budget of $70 million. Despite the film experiencing the lowest-ever opening weekend for a DreamWorks Animation film, grossing $26.7 million since its release by Universal Pictures on June 30, the partnership with NetApp continues to play a crucial role in supporting the studio’s complex data management needs and facilitating streamlined workflows. NetApp’s All-Flash Array systems and hybrid storage design, in particular, have contributed to simplifying the intricate processes involved in creating characters like Ruby Gillman in the film.

This enduring collaboration signifies NetApp’s commitment to supporting the evolving demands of the animation industry, empowering studios like DreamWorks Animation to navigate the intricate landscape of data-intensive animated filmmaking.

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