Businesses not just in India, but the world over, are experiencing the advantages of deploying high-performance HP Workstations. After all, these power-packed, next-generation machines are the secret behind organisational success. Here are a couple of case studies that showcase how two of India’s leading corporates have reaped the rewards of choosing HP Workstations.
Century Communication Ltd. pioneered for the first time in the Indian media and entertainment industry, the deployment of blade servers for rendering, with grand success. CCL is a multifaceted media and entertainment company with interests in television, film, radio, visual effects (VFX), animation and other growing aspects of the media and entertainment industry. It provides a confluence of cutting-edge creativity, state-of-the-art technology, best-in-class talent and professional approach in all its business interests. CCL enjoys a diversified growth model with its inter-linked yet distinct businesses presenting a sound mix of exposure in the high-growth segment along with a stable revenue stream. CCL businesses include film and video post-production and visual effects (VFX), Air time sales, TV content production, Broadcast branding and design, Studio complex and digital newsroom service, and Radio broadcasting. CCL’s brands include Pixion, Pearl Media, CCL Studio, CCL Radio and Metamorphosis.
Pixion, one of CCL’s brands, is heavily into visual effects (VFX) and animation, and uses high-end IT for its core business applications. Once a film is shot, audio and video digital effects are added to it. This process requires very high-end graphical workstations and skilled artists to do the job. Once the VFX process is complete, the file goes for rendering. The rendering process requires huge computing power from a cluster of servers, computing together. Even during animation, high-end graphical workstations are required. In addition, it faced challenges in terms of high cost of real estate, requirement of speed during process so that the wait time is reduced, huge power requirement, huge cooling requirement, requirement for huge capital, infrastructure and creative artists, and use of the latest, faster, highly reliable and technically most advanced graphic workstations which are capable of running all the latest graphic software. Last but not the least, to maintain the quality and keep highly paid artists working instead of waiting around for images to render?CCL required a high- performance information technology (IT) infrastructure.
Founded in 1995, CCL had a vision to provide new age technology and talent to broadcasters and film makers and convert their imagination into reality. ?We wanted the best workstations, the best network and the best server blades available, so that we could reduce image-rendering time, and even reduce the number of artists,? Abhishek Tewari, Director, CCL says. ?Our objective was also to improve our efficiency by 40% compared to what we had before.?
He studied the HP blade technology carefully and tested it in the rendering process at Pixion for a considerable time. He spent some months evaluating hardware and searching for a vendor that could provide the entire package ? servers, storage and workstations ? finally deciding on HP. ?We did a stress test, comparing HP to another hardware manufacturers, to see how the servers and networks would respond under heavy loads,? says Abhishek. ?The HP hardware out-performed the competition in every test we ran.?
One HP blade chassis takes one third the space as compared to normal servers. This resulted in huge savings on real estate cost. As HP blade server technology takes less power to run, the requirement of power was brought down drastically. A lot less cooling is required to run an HP blade server chassis resulting in still reduction of requirement for power. The massive computing power offered by an HP blade chassis resulted in huge saving in wait time of artist and customers. HP blades are less expensive as compared to traditional server technology, hence offering huge monetary saving. HP Workstations offered compatibility with all the latest graphic cards and also full optimisation of these cards. CCL has experienced no unplanned downtime with the HP solution and has been able to provide artists with 24×7 access to data.
HP’s sales team was specifically aggressive in offering competitive prices and other pre- & post-sales support, which made Century’s decision easier. HP Blade technology is a far more superior technology as it can take 16 servers in one chassis as compared to 14, offered by the competition. HP today has the largest IT infrastructure spread across India offering wide service locations. Century has offices in Noida, Mumbai and Chennai. It would be easier for Century to shuffle IT infrastructure across states and yet have reliable service assurance from HP. HP in India is the only IT company which offers complete end-to-end solutions covering hardware, software and services. ?We’ve accomplished our efficiency goals and exceeded them,? concludes Abhishek. ?We wanted to position CCL as the best option in the industry for delivering top quality, state-of-the-art services at a competitive price. HP has helped us accomplish this goal,? he adds.
Being in media industry, IT would be our main backbone. Trying new technologies which offer us faster workflow would be our main focus. We would be looking at IT to lower our costs and offer speed to our workflow resulting in higher growth for us. We have high targets in front of us and we would keep IT at the core of all our activities and HP perfectly fits in our scheme of things. It’s been one year now since we ordered the first blade server technology. We are fully satisfied and happy with the installation and maintenance part,? says Abhishek Tewari- Director, CCL.
They have ordered for INR 2 million worth of HP Workstations, Blade servers and network switches in the coming months encompassing the whole year with HP fitting in the entire scheme of their IT plans.
