Megaport helps Framestore render Hollywood hits quickly in the cloud

Network as a Service (NaaS) provider Megaport is helping bring Hollywood hits to the big screen by providing creative studio Framestore with a solution that allows it to tap into the power of public cloud providers to deliver on demand visual effects projects.

Framestore, which is headquartered in London with offices across the globe, has worked on hits such as Avengers Endgame and Mulan, as well as television, commercials and immersive media projects, including VR, AR and MR experiences, and theme park attractions, needed to modernise its IT infrastructure with additional compute power to make the rendering process easier.

Megaport’s Software-Defined Network (SDN) allows Framestore to create on-demand, pay-as-you-go cloud connections, while supporting the compute power that animation and visual effects rendering requires, with low latency, high reliability and performance.

“The rendering process used to take hours, if not days to complete and we simply didn’t have that kind of time. So, we needed a change. Working with Megaport, connectivity is so easy and consistent across all of our offices. The solution has significantly reduced connectivity costs while speeding up the process for our rendering artists,” explained Beren Lewis, director of global systems & infrastructure technology, Framestore.

“Prior to working with Megaport, we had to make sure our creative work was done during the day with rendering scheduled overnight – and IT staff had to be on call around the clock in case something unexpectedly stopped working. This was not a sustainable solution for our artists or our IT team. Megaport has changed all of that.”

By utilising Megaport’s SDN, Framestore can modernise its network by moving away from unreliable internet-based tunnels to private connectivity. The Megaport portal has already enabled Framestore to establish Virtual Cross Connects (VXCs) between its London office and Google Cloud as well as Microsoft Azure. This creates lots of potential benefits, including the ability to scale up and down in just a few clicks to meet daily, weekly or monthly changes in demand. Framestore’s US offices are also connected via Megaport to AWS for rendering purposes, quickly realising the same connectivity benefit.

The Framestore team will utilise Megaport technology as they work on upcoming releases such as the latest instalment of Fantastic Beasts, The Suicide Squad and The Little Mermaid.