Agora uses a digital workspace, managed by Leostream, for its distributed team to allow direct collaboration across the entire pipeline, while maintaining performance and security standards.
The Agora global network of more than 6,000 computer graphic artists delivers freelance services to media studios around the world. Based in Montreal, Agora connects artists with studios, making a talent pool of pros available in fields like animation, 3D graphics and visual effects for projects ranging from feature films, television and advertising to gaming and virtual reality.
Like many other media and entertainment organisations, Agora relies on cloud services to establish a secure, scalable studio environment that is continuously available. After starting out with a custom broker and gateway from a provider, however, Agora found the equipment soon fell short in terms of performance and reliability. Such flaws can cause critical problems when collaborating on major projects with international contributors.
Connecting a Freelance Workforce
Agora needed to connect its distributed workforce, and at the same time meet the security requirements of its clients. Instead of the broker and gateway arrangement, the network adopted a digital workspace, able to accommodate a diverse, distributed team. It allows direct collaboration across the entire pipeline, while maintaining the performance and security standards required, even for large-scale projects.
Leostream is the developer and designer of the workspace. Designed for complex, resource-intensive environments like M&E, Leostream’s platform is used for high-performance access to creative tools and hardware. It is simple to manage and very scalable.
"Our deployment is designed to support the production of a full feature film, involving every department from rigging and animation to lighting and final rendering," said Patrick Coulombe, Agora co-founder and CTO. As a proof of concept, Agora began using the platform on a short film titled Transferable, which Patrick said served as a solid foundation from which to refine processes and prove the system's capability for increasingly complex productions.
Agora's short film 'Transferable'.
Controlling Security and Costs
The Leostream platform has several features that Agora regards as particularly beneficial. One of these is the ability to effectively simulate and control project costs, such as cloud-based GPU workstations, for high-performance tasks. This tool has proven invaluable for budgeting and planning.
When working on high-profile Hollywood projects, where protecting intellectual property is essential, Leostream’s Remote Desktop Access Platform helps Agora maintain security by hosting all workstations within a virtual private cloud. Supporting complex workflows in one hybrid environment, and allowing users to access the right tools and resources for each project, is a simpler approach to managing hybrid on-premises and cloud environments.
Where cloud spend needs to be kept low, Leostream can be used to automate idle compute management to avoid unnecessary costs, and to take better advantage of on-premises resources.
Hybrid Workflow Management
Through display protocols, organisations can set up high-performance remote access for their users to tools, including GPU-heavy applications and Wacom tablets. Simplified access to collaborative sessions can also be set up for dispersed post-production teams, editors and creators who need to work together remotely. Leostream makes it possible to enforce strict access control and multifactor authentication to protect proprietary content – without using VPNs.
Agora plans to expand their use of the platform and further integrate their on-premise and cloud infrastructures. For example, a new location in Montreal will host a render farm and some on-prem workstations. To maximize efficiency and resource utilization, it is considering using thin clients that connect via Leostream, and repurposing their workstations as blades for the render farm.
"As we continue to grow, we anticipate Leostream will continue to influence how we unify and optimise our workflows," Patrick said.
Leostream CEO Karen Gondoly said, "Modern creative studios all face similar challenges such as appropriate performance and latency for graphics- and data-intensive workloads, but Agora has a distinct need in having more than 6,000 artists on call who can be assigned to entertainment and media projects and need access to resources. They now have a robust system that gives them a productive, secure, scalable and collaborative environment." leostream.com
