Intelligent Creatures Uses Isilon IQ to Power Breakthroughs in Visual Effects

Intelligent Creatures Uses Isilon IQ to Power Breakthroughs in Visual Effects

SEATTLE, Aug. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- At SIGGRAPH 2008 in Los Angeles, Isilon(R) Systems (NASDAQ:ISLN), the leader in clustered storage, today announced that Intelligent Creatures, a leading visual effects company that has worked on a number of major Hollywood films including Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Babel, The Game Plan and currently in production on The Watchmen is using Isilon IQ clustered storage to power its entire post-production workflow, including 2D compositing and 3D animation. Using Isilon clustered storage, Intelligent Creatures is able to streamline its rendering and asset management operations, significantly increasing data access and network performance to speed project turnaround. In addition, Isilon IQ's single point of management and ease of use have enabled Intelligent Creatures to take on larger and more complex projects without adding additional staff or increasing the size of its render farm.

"Intelligent Creatures is focused on delivering the most progressive visual effects in the industry, enabling our Hollywood clients to tell their stories in the most compelling, visually rich manner possible," said Michael Hatton, CTO, Intelligent Creatures. "As demand grows, our work is increasingly more data-intensive and time-sensitive, requiring a storage solution with the performance and ease of management necessary to accelerate our operations without increasing costs. Isilon's clustered storage system delivered on all fronts."

In order to continuously deliver the most immersive visual experiences for Hollywood studios with demanding schedules, Intelligent Creatures utilizes a render farm of more than 300 processors running a variety of high performance, data-intensive visual effects applications. Prior to using Isilon IQ, Intelligent Creatures traditional storage system was significantly less capable of delivering the high concurrent throughput necessary to support the around-the-clock work of its artists, hindering productivity and slowing project turnaround. By deploying Isilon clustered storage, Intelligent Creatures is now able to scale performance linearly or independently with minimal downtime and workflow interruption, providing its operations with both the high performance and simplicity necessary to power its workflow. Additionally, Isilon's unique "pay as you grow" architecture and reliable, immediate data access have enabled Intelligent Creatures to take on larger, more intense projects without increasing the size of its render farm or artist staff, dramatically reducing cost and resource expenditure.

"As audiences continue to demand more realism and visual impact from motion pictures, progressive visual effects companies are a critical component in enabling Hollywood studios to meet this demand with each new release," said Steve Fitz, Senior Vice President of Global Field Operations, Isilon Systems. "Intelligent Creatures is at the leading edge of visual effects studios delivering exactly the experience consumers want -- and Hollywood needs -- to keep audiences coming back for years to come."

Powered by OneFS(R), Isilon IQ delivers the industry's first single file system that unifies and provides instant and ubiquitous access to the rapidly growing stores of digital content, eliminating the cost and complexity barriers of traditional storage architectures. OneFS is a unified operating system software layer that powers all of Isilon's award-winning family of IQ clustered storage systems, including the Isilon IQ 200, 1920, 3000, 6000, 9000, 12000, Accelerator, and EX 6000, 9000 and 12000. Isilon also provides a robust suite of software applications including SnapshotIQ(TM), SmartConnect(TM), SmartQuotas(TM), MigrationIQ(TM), and SyncIQ(R) that leverage OneFS and clustered storage, providing the highest levels of data protection and automated data management.

About Isilon

Isilon Systems (NASDAQ:ISLN) is the worldwide leader in clustered storage systems and software for digital content and unstructured data, enabling enterprises to transform data into information -- and information into breakthroughs. Isilon's award-winning family of IQ clustered storage systems combines Isilon's OneFS operating system software with the latest advances in industry-standard hardware to deliver modular, pay-as-you-grow, enterprise-class storage systems. Isilon's clustered storage solutions speed access to critical business information while dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of storing it. Information about Isilon can be found at http://www.isilon.com/.

About Intelligent Creatures

Intelligent Creatures is an artist-driven Visual Effects house dedicated to helping some of cinema's finest directors tell some of cinema's most compelling stories. With fully integrated 2-D and 3-D compositing and animation pipelines and a wealth of on-set experience, the Company stands among the industry's most progressive VFX creators. Intelligent Creatures relentlessly pursues its mission to be the leading company in the world providing Visual Effects that plays a strong supporting role in high-end creatively driven films. Since 2003, it has made cutting-edge contributions to major film projects notable for their artistic and commercial success. http://www.intelligentcreatures.com/

The names of companies mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

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Source: Isilon Systems

CONTACT: Jay Wampold of Isilon Systems, +1-206-315-7620,
jay.wampold@isilon.com

Web site: http://www.isilon.com/
http://www.intelligentcreatures.com/

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