Animation centre needs to expand

SHARING IDEAS:(l-r) Shazril, IBM Worldwide Cloud Computing Marketing Global Technology Services Bruce E. Otte, IBM Malaysia Country Cloud Leader Ku Chuan Cherng, IBM Worldwide Regulatory Analyst Corporate Security Strategy Marne E. Gordan and Abdul Jalil sharing their views on cloud computing at the IBM cloud computing symposium.

KUALA LUMPUR: The Multimedia Development Corp (MDeC) hopes to further improve the infrastructure at the Malaysia Animation and Creative Content Centre (MAC3) to meet growing demand.

The custodian of the MSC Malaysia initiative said there are 50 registered users from the content development industry, as well as animation students, using the facility regularly for rendering tasks.

Also, MDeC said, the MAC3 supports an average of three rendering projects running simultaneously at any given time, but this number fluctuates according to seasons and phases.

About three new users sign-up monthly.

Based on the current demand for the facility, MDeC expects that it will need to increase the number of servers there to 300 by the second quarter of 2013 to keep up.

"We are preparing to present MAC3's results to management. Hopefully with such numbers, we'll qualify for allocations to expand the facility," said Shazril Rahman, a senior executive at the facility.

MAC3, built in partnership with multinational technology company IBM Corp, is equipped with 128 high-performance servers coupled to IBM's rendering software. It also has 80 terabytes of storage, and high-speed broadband connectivity.

It was built so that local animation companies could have access to huge computing power without having to build their own rendering centres, which also cost a lot, or turn to overseas facilities.

MAC3 went operational in June, last year.

According to IBM, the facility is able to perform rendering jobs 8x faster than if a single workstation was used.

Shazril was speaking at a media roundable on the sidelines of IBM Malaysia's symposium on cloud computing here.

He said MAC3 has helped local animation players save up to RM500,000 yearly in total in rendering costs, and has cut down rendering time from days to just hours.

Abdul Jalil Rahman, an executive at the facility, said that before MAC3 was built, content developers had to look for high-speed computers in order to render their works, or use rendering facilities in other countries.

This process time was consuming, costly and those facilities could not promise proper confidentiality of intellectual property to their clients.

"The onus was on the right owners to protect their works by signing NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) with the facilities to protect their works.

"But here at MAC3, our users can manage their own intellectual properties, which they can also access from any device," Abdul Jalil added.

The MSC Malaysia initiative is aimed at leapfrogging the nation into a knowledge-based economy