Thinkwell Group trims up to $170,000 annually from IT costs with virtualization solution from Dell and VMware

•  Backup/Recovery/Archiving•  Green Computing•  Mobility•  Power & Cooling•  Storage•  Virtualization

“ We’ve virtually eliminated the risk we continually faced of losing huge amounts of data and not meeting a customer’s expectations. The Dell servers and storage allow us to transfer large amounts of information so that information is always available.”Joe Zenas, CEO, Thinkwell Group

Customer Profile

Company: Thinkwell Group

Industry: Arts, Entertainment and Media

Country: United States

Employees: 70

Web: www.thinkwellgroup.com

Business Need Thinkwell Group needed a scalable, flexible IT infrastructure that would enable it to stretch its facilities due to business growth, send massive files globally to production teams and clients, accommodate spikes in staff numbers and never lose data.

Solution The company chose a virtualization solution based on Dell™ PowerEdge™ servers with Intel® Xeon® processors, VMware virtualization software, Dell PowerVault™ storage, Dell Precision™ workstations, Dell Latitude™ laptops and Dell PowerConnect™ switches. The solution was preconfigured and pretested by Dell.

  Benefits

•  Up to $170,000 annual cost savings  ($50,000 hardware, $120,000 power and cooling)

•  Zero data lost since solution went live 

•  Fast implementation with factory configuration and testing

•  Cost savings and shortened deployment times and learning  curves with Dell iSCSI storage 

•  Scalable solution accommodates peaks in hiring without increase in  data center footprint 

Fernbank NatureQuest, a new children’s exhibition at Fernbank Museum of Natural History, Atlanta.

“ We were able to reduce our annual IT spend by $50,000 on hardware, and up to $10,000 in power and cooling each month, or up to $170,000 annually, by virtualizing with Dell.” Joe Zenas, CEO, Thinkwell Group

Halfway around the world, Thinkwell conceived and designed MGM Studio City Korea, a fantasy backlot come alive with eye-popping detail, exclusive dining, nightlife entertainment, rides and attractions. In Europe, Thinkwell conceived, designed and produced the Ice Age Adventure dark ride featuring more than 50 animatronic and static characters from the blockbuster film. Back in the United States, Thinkwell created and installed Fernbank NatureQuest, a fully immersive, nature-inspired children’s exhibit at Atlanta’s Fernbank Museum of Natural History with more than 100 interactive encounters, hands-on learning activities and live animals for kids to explore.

Experience-based entertainment

Thinkwell creates experience-based entertainment for theme parks, museums, casinos, retail and resort destinations. The company operates globally to bring imagination to life to create unforgettable experiences for guests. The team thrives on heart-stopping excitement, and the more unlikely the concept, the more fun they have making it a reality.

Joe Zenas, CEO of Thinkwell, leads the company along with Chief Strategy Officer and CFO, Francois Bergeron; and Chief Creative Officer, Craig Hanna. For the past ten years, the company, which began over a garage, has developed an international reputation for its process and quality of work. Now with a staff of 70 and offices in London, Portland, Oregon and headquarters in Burbank, California, Zenas explains that success has been a matter of believing

in his team, developing a simple mission and expanding everywhere possible.

Needing reliable, flexible IT

“I often tell people that working at our company is much like one of the thrill rides we help design,” says Zenas. “It’s

If it’s snowing in Dubai, Thinkwell Group can’t be far away.

An industry leader in the concept development and design

of immersive entertainment experiences, Thinkwell Group

(Thinkwell) designed the play areas of Ski Dubai, a 25-story

indoor ski resort, featuring an awe-inspiring array of ski

slopes, play areas and state-of-the-art facilities.

Technology at Work

Services

Dell™ Hardware Customization Services

Dell ProSupport

Hardware

Dell Latitude™ laptops

Dell PowerConnect™ switches

Dell PowerEdge™ 2950 servers with Intel® Xeon® processors 5400 series

Dell PowerVault™ MD3000i, MD1000 and DP500 Highly Available Modular Disk Storage Array

Dell Precision™ workstations

Software

Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008

Microsoft Windows® Storage Server

Symantec™ Backup Exec™

VMware® Consolidated Backup

VMware vSphere™ 4

Windows® 7

Windows Server® 2008

exciting, it’s crazy, it’s fun and as soon as it’s over, you want to do it all over again. However, while our clients are glamorous, we’re not quite so fancy. At the core, we’re a small company that excels at project and team management. We require IT systems that can handle the enormous stresses we put on them and have flexibility to boot.”

Thinkwell lives on a schedule of rigid deadlines. Every project needs specialist technology and requires complex project plans. Every day, Thinkwell’s teams move massive amounts of digital information around the globe to and from project teams and clients. The types of projects they work on require gigantic files—from CAD files and renderings to high-definition media.

Like many other small businesses, Thinkwell needs to get as much return as it can from every dollar it invests in the company. The company relies on its IT infrastructure as a competitive differentiator in its business.

Stretching resources to  grow with business 

The technology solution that has helped Thinkwell manage IT investments is server virtualization. “Virtualization allows us to scale out our IT resources, stretch our facilities to grow with us and be environmentally responsible by offsetting some of our energy needs,” says Zenas. “We found the benefits of using virtualization through an all-too-common problem. We had a server go down and lost crucial data. We lost massive data just prior to when it was due to a client. There was no way we could recreate the files in time, and they were not backed up on another server. We paid dearly to have the data restored, and although we held on to the trust of the client, we learned a valuable lesson the hard way.”

For its server virtualization solution, Thinkwell turned to Dell and its partner VMware, which provided a

preconfigured platform especially designed for small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs). The solution that Dell recommended and preconfigured consists of Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers with Intel Xeon processors coupled with a Dell PowerVault MD3000i, MD1000 and DP500 Highly Available Modular Disk Storage Array for storage for a fault tolerant turnkey solution. The solution provided Thinkwell peace of mind with dedicated Dell ProSupport and Dell implementation services. Dell PowerConnect switches and powerful Dell Precision workstations and Dell Latitude laptops round out the solution.

Reducing downtime,  preventing business interruptions

Thinkwell needs to ensure the attractions it builds are up and running for most of the day for 365 days a year—requiring little to no maintenance. Dell PowerEdge servers are designed to deliver the performance and reliability the company needs to keep its applications and business processes available and responsive while helping lower IT operating and staff administration costs.

With direct-attached Dell PowerVault storage, Thinkwell is able to back up data on its servers using VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB), Microsoft Windows Storage Server and Symantec Backup Exec. The Dell storage uses iSCSI connectivity using the company’s existing Ethernet network infrastructure, speeding deployment times, shortening learning curves and saving money. In addition, that network is available globally, so storage can be assigned and moved remotely.

“We’ve virtually eliminated the risk we continually faced of losing huge amounts of data and not meeting a customer’s expectations,” says Zenas. “The Dell servers and storage allow us to transfer large amounts of information securely and ensure that we have the right backup so that information is always available.”

“ If we had started from scratch on our own, it would have taken months to research and test solutions with various vendors. Dell and VMware had our virtualization plan ready to implement in no time.” Joe Zenas, CEO, Thinkwell Group

Thinkwell has a small in-house IT staff of three people, led by Dennis Nieves, IT director, which is consistent with its practice of staying lean while developing global capabilities. “Our IT staff is on the hook for instant problem solving when we need them,” says Zenas. “When our IT teams encounter a problem outside their knowledge space, a single phone call to Dell ProSupport, tech-to-tech, gets them the knowledge and expertise they need to fix the problem.”

Saving months of testing and installation time

When virtualization was first introduced, costs made it feasible only for the largest companies. Today, new technologies and services introduced by Dell make virtualization more accessible to companies at both ends of the spectrum.

Recently Dell launched business-ready configurations of virtualization services for multiple parts of the SMB market. By combining Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell PowerVault storage, Dell provides virtualization services at cost-effective prices to SMBs ranging from “mom-and-pop” operations to multi-office environments. The Dell offering is customized to each customer’s needs and pretested at the factory, saving months of installation time. “If we had started from scratch on our own, it would have taken months to research and test solutions with various vendors,” says Zenas. “Dell and VMware had our virtualization plan ready to implement in no time.”

$170,000 cut from annual IT spend 

For Thinkwell, virtualization has proven to be the key to reducing IT costs. “We were able to reduce our annual IT spend by $50,000 on hardware, and more than $120,000 in power and cooling each month, or $170,000 annually, by virtualizing with Dell,” says Zenas. “In addition, the IT staff has been freed from day-to-day maintenance to participate in new business pitches and has helped move Thinkwell to develop a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering.”

Thinkwell has approximately 70 employees who comprise the core team, but projects requiring teams of up to 150 contractors around the globe are the norm. Technology needs change based on the projects the company is working on. In some cases, the company needs to staff up very quickly to meet deadlines, bringing on as many as 20 new people per week for a few weeks or months at a time, with varying technology needs.

“We can scale to our temporary employment spikes and avoid significant capital expenditures,” says Zenas. “We don’t have to expand our server room every time we have a big project come in. We can get the server power we need by expanding with virtual machines. Dell provides us with the tools we need to succeed so we can take our own path and live our clients’ dreams with them.”

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