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VIDEO GAME DEVELOPER NINJA THEORY REFRESHES NETWORKING WITH KROME TECHNOLOGIES
- Award-winning Cambridge-based developer Ninja Theory sees tenfold increase in network speed
- Achieves easier maintenance, greater resilience, better scalability achieved with Dell EMC Networking
- 10 gigabit Ethernet means employees no longer struggle to download large files
Krome today announced that Ninja Theory, the award winning British video game developer behind Heavenly Sword and Hellblade, has deployed solutions from Krome Technologies to transform its network infrastructure, resulting in a tenfold increase in speed.
Video game development is an increasingly data-intensive industry and Ninja Theory employs dozens of developers who need to download large game builds of up to 75 gigabytes as part of their daily work. However, the company’s legacy network infrastructure was increasingly unable to cope with the growing complexity of gaming technology and graphics, leaving employees frustrated and causing bottlenecks in production.
Ninja Theory turned to Krome Technologies to procure a new networking solution to meet their needs. The solution is based around Dell EMC Active Fabric, a leaf-spine architecture which reduces latency, increases network throughput, and is highly scalable yet affordable. As Ninja Theory could not afford any downtime, the new infrastructure was installed over the course of a weekend and was up and running by the time workers arrived on Monday morning.
“Our reputation and profitability are dependent on delivering new products on time, and our legacy Cisco infrastructure was threatening our ability to do this,” said Chris Belton, IT Manager, Ninja Theory. “We approached several vendors, but only Krome could deliver the capabilities we needed at an affordable cost.
The new infrastructure incorporates two Dell EMC Networking S4810 core switches and 10 Dell EMC Networking N2048 edge switches, each using eight 10 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) uplinks connected to the core switches. Today, Ninja Theory ruins 90 per cent of its servers at 10Gb, with endpoints running at 1Gb, and the company plans to upgrade its storage infrastructure to 10Gb in the near future.
“The difference is astonishing,” said Belton. “Our employees came in on Monday morning and were amazed at how quickly they could download material. Overnight, the new infrastructure had removed the bottlenecks that were threatening to derail production.”
“Speed isn’t the only benefit,” continued Belton. “Management is much easier than before, when we had to shut down the system to perform maintenance. With Krome, we have a software console that enables us to manage the whole network easily, and because every floor-port is fully patched and labelled, we no longer have to do any cable or physical patch management – everything is managed through the server. Finally, it’s more capable and approximately half the cost of the technology proposed by our incumbent network provider.”
“Enterprises need to keep pace with the huge growth in data and the increasing complexity of software applications,” said Rupert Mills, Managing Director, Krome Technologies. “The demands on businesses today mean that high network throughput is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’ but rather a necessity to ensure that operations are not stymied by bottlenecks in the workflow. Businesses like Ninja Theory that take charge of their infrastructure and align them with their operational needs will be best placed to seize the advantage over their competitors.”
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