Customer Profiles

Force10 Networks Technology Seamlessly Powers Nexus Productions

The client:
Nexus is a leading animation and live action production house based in the media hub of central London. The organization has a vast and impressive client portfolio, including advertising and creative agencies worldwide, servicing these clients with the very best in animation and mixed media entertainment.

Nexus works across a wide range of animation and film mediums including 2D, 3D, stop frame, live action and even puppetry, winning projects with household names such as the BBC, DreamWorks, Sony Music, Virgin Atlantic and Coca Cola.  They’ve garnered nominations for Academy Awards® and Grammy Awards in the process, along with wins in all the world’s major advertising awards.

Since Nexus was founded 12 years ago it has worked hard to establish itself as a leader in animation entertainment. Today Nexus employs almost 100 people and projected forecasts look only set to increase as the company continues to win international contracts.

Nexus is a business that relies heavily on technology, and in order to maintain its competitiveness and to continue to deliver outstanding animation to its clients, the company required the IT infrastructure to support the forecasted increase in activity.

The challenge:
A fundamental requirement in the animation business is the ability to pull and push large amounts of inter-dependent data to and from file servers and render farm nodes. Fast data distribution is therefore critical to Nexus’ core function. During peak times there can be anywhere from 60 to 70 artists working simultaneously, sending data around the Nexus building. Additionally, due to the fact animation carries several thousand images per sequence, often in high definition, it is critical that the networking infrastructure can cope with and effectively deliver large amounts of data. 

As the business grew in size, Nexus Productions’ existing infrastructure became increasingly strained and was in danger of becoming incapable of meeting their user requirements. Employees were becoming frustrated with slow network speeds and data downloads as well as the infrastructure’s inability to cope with and efficiently manage the data volumes. Management knew that this would eventually lead to a loss in productivity, and could threaten the highly-regarded Nexus reputation.

For these reasons Nexus began to explore alternatives to its existing networking infrastructure. Having researched the key networking providers for the media industry, Nexus met with Root6, a media industry focused supplier of Force10 networking solutions and products. After an internal consultation, Root6 was appointed to work with the Nexus IT team to develop a solution to meet their specific needs.

At the same time, Nexus was expanding its office space in London’s Shoreditch from
three floors to five. It therefore made sense that while Nexus was growing physically, it should also implement technology which would meet the increase in demand and future networking needs.

The solution:
After an extensive analysis of the current infrastructure a bespoke networking solution was developed to meet Nexus’ unique requirements.

Nexus selected Force10 as the network vendor. Force10, are one of the leaders in networking solutions within the media industry, Force10 demonstrated their experience and knowledge of the media sector, particularly the ever growing demand for high definition, band-width intensive applications and high volume traffic demands placed on the network. Nexus has deployed a combination of Gigabit and Ethernet technology to meet those demands. The Force10 solution provided a flexible framework for Nexus and the results speak for themselves.

The solution dramatically improved network performance and management, high data
transfer speeds, and future-proofed systems for the anticipated increase in levels of activity.

Director of Operations and Finance at Nexus Productions, Ian Mansel-Thomas said: “The Force10 networking solution has impacted the organization in ways we would never have thought possible.”

“Attracting and retaining the very best freelance artists is critical to our business and alongside our creative reputation, this is helped by having industry-leading technology in-house. Now, once an artist has worked in our studios with the new technology seamlessly supporting their work, they are always keen to come back,” Ian said.

The new networking system was put through its paces in November and December of 2008, when Nexus experienced the highest level of activity in its history, with the addition of two significant projects with advertising agencies in the US. The Nexus team were suitably impressed with how the networking system stood up to the test.

“The Force10 system delivered exactly what was promised, even during times of heightened activity. Now that we have seen what the system can handle, I believe we are well positioned to take on more large commercial and film projects in the future,” Ian concluded.

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