HOPR is an award-winning New York City based production company specializing in animation, visual effects, and creative branding solutions.
Their clients include Paramount, Sony, Google, EA Sports, Dropbox, Macy’s, NBA, Nickelodeon, Airgas, New York Life Insurance, Prudential Financial, Goldman Sachs, and DWS Investments.
Contents
HOPR’s Need to Go Remote During the Pandemic
In mid-2020, with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns, HOPR needed to reconsider its production model and adopt a cloud-based workflow that enabled its artists to work and collaborate remotely.
The HOPR team decided they wanted to implement Amazon Nimble Studio, an AWS service that enables companies to run their creative studio applications and production pipelines entirely on the cloud. They partnered with Advanced Tier Services Partner TrackIt on AWS’ recommendation to ensure a successful implementation and onboarding process.
“Nimble Studio seemed like the perfect option that checked all the boxes for us. We wanted to really give it a shot to be a cloud-based studio and move our entire production pipeline to the cloud for all of our projects, as well as any long-term productions that we were going to work on.” – Tom DiFiore, COO, HOPR
Implementation
The TrackIt team helped HOPR deploy Nimble Studio at full capacity, built custom Amazon Machine Images software stacks, and ensured that best management and security practices were followed. The team implemented a license server entirely in the cloud to ensure that applications used in the studio are licensed within the VPC itself.
TrackIt included Amazon FSx for Windows File Server for storage with shadow copy and routine backup policies to enable recovery of deleted/modified assets. The team also configured AWS DataSync to enable data archiving in Amazon S3, a more cost-effective storage option. For further cost optimization, lifecycle rules were set up to move long-unused assets to S3 Glacier and S3 Glacier Deep Archive.
TrackIt’s Expertise & Results
Tom DiFiore, COO at HOPR praised TrackIt’s expertise, attention to detail, and commitment to HOPR. Tom also highlighted the importance of working with an AWS-recognized partner like TrackIt to ensure a successful implementation.
“My comfort level is very high knowing that I have TrackIt by my side as a guiding hand. As a COO, I’m the one on the team that’s responsible for the implementation of our infrastructure, and it brings me great comfort knowing that I can pick up the phone and call TrackIt to get any issues resolved right away.” – Tom DiFiore, COO, HOPR
Q. Qualities of the TrackIt team that stood out to you?“The qualities that stood out to me were the TrackIt team’s expertise, attention to detail, and their commitment to HOPR. We had weekly meetings where everyone, from the engineers to the CEO, were actively involved in assisting us. The TrackIt team’s thoughtful planning, documentation, guided walkthrough of implementation, and their follow-ups were of paramount importance.”
– Tom DiFiore, COO, HOPR
Q. Would you Recommend TrackIt to other companies looking to implement similar solutions? Why?“Yes, definitely. The TrackIt team’s expertise and their involvement with the AWS Nimble Studio team have been instrumental for us. Their dedication, support, and professionalism make them a real asset to any studio looking to migrate its production pipeline to the cloud.”
– Tom DiFiore, COO, HOPR
Challenge(s):
• The need to migrate an entire production workflow to the cloud and enable artists to work remotely
Solution(s):
• Amazon Nimble Studio
Outcome(s):
• Successful implementation and onboarding of Amazon Nimble Studio
