Award-winning visual effects studio Digital Dimension and leading grid software provider Digipede Technologies announced today that Digipede will provide an integrated software solution necessary to power Digital Dimension’s digital content creation grid. Digital Dimension has licensed the Digipede Network, leading distributed computing solution for the Microsoft Windows platform, to manage a wide array of applications used in the studio’s 3D animation, motion graphics, and visual effects work for film, television, and gaming. Winner of six Emmy and three Visual Effects Society awards for motion picture visual effects and feature animation, Digital Dimension has provided special effects for the ABC hit series Lost, and movies from The Last Samurai to Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. These successes brought IT complexity. In many cases, individual graphics packages were working only through application-specific schedulers. With so many projects having different requirements and deadlines, managing the multiple compute-intensive applications required to produce cutting-edge digital content was becoming a serious bottleneck. “Our digital content creation business is booming, and we’ve acquired a lot of hardware and specialized software for leading-edge visual effects,” says Ben Girard, president of Digital Dimension. “But as the number of simultaneous projects has grown, we realized we needed a way to manage those resources smoothly. We looked at a variety of solutions, but Digipede’s flexibility, scalability, and integration with the Microsoft server products, and the .NET platform made it a powerful and logical choice.” Girard continues, “A closed system application scheduler just doesn’t cut it anymore; we have to reliably manage multiple applications in a production workflow, and Digipede gives us that capability. Digipede takes care of the grid computing, so our team can focus on great content creation. By installing the Digipede Network to manage digital content creation across our hundreds of diverse CPUs, and tying that directly into our business applications like our internal collaboration platform, we get a far more complete picture of our entire production pipeline. Digipede allows us to get additional and valuable business intelligence from our processes and help us measure the data that is important to our success. We can be much more responsive to the changing requirements of our clients as we take on new projects. We’ve positioned ourselves for further growth.” John Powers, president of Digipede Technologies, adds “Digipede is delighted to work with Digital Dimension in the growing field of digital content creation. Our users continue to amaze us with the variety of applications that require truly impressive amounts of computing horsepower. As computer animation and visual effects become more integrated with all media – not just blockbuster movies – the capability to manage these effects in a production workflow becomes critical. With the most advanced .NET API in the industry, the Digipede Network gives our digital media clients the ability to adapt to changing production schedules on the fly. As Digital Dimension puts these capabilities to work on their creative projects, we look forward to seeing the awesome results – at a theater near you!” The Digipede Network is an affordable distributed computing solution built entirely on Microsoft .NET that dramatically improves the speed and performance of demanding real-world business applications. Integrated with Microsoft SQL Server, Visual Studio, Windows Compute Cluster Server, and other Windows Server products, the Digipede Network is radically easier to buy, install and use than other grid-computing solutions. Using the Digipede Network, businesses can easily achieve the benefits of grid computing, including improved IT agility and increased application scalability. Developers can write .NET or COM applications that will take advantage of hundreds or thousands of computers, bringing the power of grid computing to the Windows platform. The Digipede Network is available in two editions: the Digipede Network Team Edition meets the needs of small departments and labs that may only have up to 20 computers, while the Digipede Network Professional Edition supports large departments and enterprises with hundreds or thousands of desktops, servers, and cluster nodes across a network. Both editions include the Digipede Workbench, which is designed to shorten the learning curve so that users can become productive immediately. Through a familiar Windows user interface, users can run distributed computing jobs with ease. Wizards assist users with learning and using the system quickly, and powerful designers provide access to greater system functionality. No complex scripting is required. Availability and Pricing The Digipede Network is available now directly from Digipede Technologies. The Digipede Network Team Edition starts at $995 for a system licensing one Digipede Server and five Digipede Agents. The Digipede Network Professional Edition starts at $4,000 for a similar configuration. Additional Agents work with either edition, and can be licensed for $199 each. Current customers of the Digipede Network Team Edition can upgrade to the Professional Edition at a discount. Both editions of the Digipede Network include the acclaimed Digipede Framework SDK at no additional charge, providing unprecedented flexibility for grid-enabling enterprise applications. For additional information about pricing and configuration options, visit Digipede’s online store at its Web site, or Digipede at sales@digipede.net.