PA L O A LT O N E T W O R K S : C u s t o m e r P r o f i l e
Palo Alto Networks® helps Animal Logic relieve
bandwidth pressure and improve security
BACKGROUND
Animal Logic is one of the world’s most accomplished digital studios producing
and developing ground breaking animation, visual effects and design. The studios
are based in Sydney with its film development arm onsite at Warner Brothers Studios
in Los Angeles. Established in 1991, the company has worked on some of the most
recognisable films of the past quarter-century, including The Matrix, Moulin
Rouge!, Happy Feet, 300, The Great Gatsby, Iron Man 3, Walking with Dinosaurs
The Movie and The LEGO® Movie. Animal Logic is currently in production on
Unbroken due for release in 2014.
BUSINESS AND CONTEXT
Animal Logic’s workforce fluctuates from 200 to 600 users at a time depending
on the number and size of the projects underway. The company runs a Local
Area Network (LAN) at its Sydney and Los Angeles sites.
Due to the nature of Animal Logic’s business, users produce and send commercially
sensitive, very high bandwidth and high quality audio, animation and visual effects
content. The network was therefore designed to scale up and down as needed.
Eugene Purugganan, Systems Engineer, Animal Logic, says, “If we are working
on a film then each image file can reach up to 30MB and if we’re working in 3D
you would have two image files per frame, one for the left eye and right eye. These
files need to flow back and forth through the network and there could be hundreds
each day, depending on the current workload. So reliability and scalability are
absolutely essential.
THE PROBLEM
Animal Logic began experiencing internet availability issues and reduced security
as a result of inadequate firewalls and increasing user demand for bandwidth.
Eugene says, “The rise of Web 2.0 meant applications and other web-based
information were coming through the standard firewalls undetected. Our previous
firewall needed to be upgraded because it didn’t show IT staff what type of data
was going through the firewall. A basic AV check doesn’t cut it anymore when it
comes to preventing threats. Meanwhile users were going around the firewall to
get things through, by using proxies and tunnelling applications or services that
ran over the standard port 80 or 443.
“The result was that our internet connection was maxing out because it was
clogged with activity we could not identify as being work-related or not. It was
affecting the company’s ability to get work done and was causing extra work for
the IT staff as we tried to discover what was happening on the network.
“We needed to take measures to get the bandwidth back to delivering what we
needed.”
ORGANISATION:
Animal Logic
INDUSTRY:
Entertainment
CHALLENGE:
Animal Logic was experiencing network
availability issues and reduced security
as a result of inadequate firewalls and
increasing user demand for bandwidth.
SOLUTION:
Palo Alto Networks PA-5020 and PA-500
for IT threat prevention and URL filtering.
RESULTS:
Since implementing Palo Alto Networks
next-generation firewall, Animal Logic has
been able to manage its network and security
much more effectively, resulting in a more
stable user experience.
PA L O A LT O N E T W O R K S : C u s t o m e r P r o f i l e
THE DECISION
Animal Logic considered various firewall solutions before selecting Palo Alto Networks
next-generation firewall.
“We considered buying three
separate products from
another vendor to do the
same thing but that still
wouldn’t have been as
effective as the single solution
from Palo Alto Networks.”
Eugene Purugganan
Systems Engineer
Animal Logic
The company chose Palo Alto Networks because its next-generation firewall can
identify a lot of traffic that traverses the network and its ‘User ID™’ and ‘App ID™’
functionality lets the IT staff control access to applications and services to users
who are authorised to do so.
Eugene says, “We considered buying three separate products from another vendor to
do the same thing but that still wouldn’t have been as effective as the single solution
from Palo Alto Networks.
“When you buy a firewall you expect it to have all the features that you want. Palo
Alto Networks next-generation firewalls have all of these features and are superior to
traditional firewalls.”
BENEFITS
Since implementing Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall, Animal Logic has
been able to manage its network and security much more effectively, resulting in a
more stable user experience.
Eugene says, “The old firewall was missing a lot of the functionality we needed and
Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall has delivered that functionality. Now
we have the ability to allow or deny the type of traffic we want, as well as detect
and stop threats in real time.
“We have also used the Palo Alto Networks next-generation firewall to better manage
excessive audio and video streaming, since that was consuming a lot of bandwidth
and was not always required for work purposes.”
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