INDUSTRY

Animal Logic to Further Leverage Power, Cooling and Scalability Advantages of Operating at Premium Equinix Hub: Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq:EQIX), the leading provider of network-neutral data centers and Internet exchange services, today announced that Animal Logic Pty Ltd, a leading digital production company, has expanded operations at Equinix’s Sydney Internet Business Exchange (IBX) center as a part of a three-year agreement. The move will enable Animal Logic to expand its deployment in Equinix’s high-performance Internet hub, which Animal Logic currently uses as a primary production facility for file serving, 3-D rendering and post-production work. Animal Logic produces award-winning design, animation and visual effects for the film, television and advertising industries. The company’s film credits include Hero, House of Flying Daggers, The Matrix, Matrix:Reloaded, Moulin Rouge!, World Trade Center and Happy Feet -- the first 3-D animated film to be produced in Australia. Supporting the company’s production and post-production services is an IT infrastructure that incorporates the latest technology, including IBM Blade Centers, and requires a data center infrastructure that provides high-performance environmental controls, including an abundant supply of power and cooling. “Before we started to gear up for the Happy Feet movie project, we had the choice to build our own data center or to look for a third party center,” said Xavier Desdoigts, Director of Technical Operations for Animal Logic. “As the challenges around Animal Logic’s accelerated growth became clearer, it made more sense for us to search for a business partner that would be able to accommodate our heavy requirements centered around blade solutions and give us the flexibility and cost effectiveness that our industry demands. Equinix was able to deliver on all fronts and we are very pleased with the solution and services we received. Since then, we have relied upon Equinix’s state-of-the-art data center environment as the principal location for most of the equipment that powers our production infrastructure.” Equinix’s Sydney center provides Animal Logic with a secure and redundant physical infrastructure with a strong track record of uptime, as well as a flexible environment that enables the company to scale up or scale down operations based on their flow of project work. To specifically meet Animal Logic’s needs for a high-performance blade server deployment, Equinix designed and implemented a customized solution that meets their unique power and cooling requirements. In addition, Equinix’s Sydney center also includes a high-performance backup system that ensures uninterrupted power even in the event of utility power disruption. “For Happy Feet and their slate of projects, Animal Logic operated one of the largest supercomputing sites in Australia with over 4,000 CPUs,” said Doug Oates, Managing Director of Equinix Australia. “Since their business requirements are constantly changing based on film and animation projects that are seasonal and often require accelerated ramp up times, Equinix provides a strong option over the complexities and ongoing maintenance costs of managing an infrastructure such as this internally.” Equinix’s Sydney IBX has become a principal hub for the region’s Internet businesses and recently announced a multimillion-dollar expansion that will increase capacity by 50 percent. With more than 150 customers, the center facilitates a critical role in the interconnection and peering infrastructure of many enterprises, content companies, networks and systems integrators.