British visual effects company Framestore has announced its partnership with Dell to expand its business presence in North America.

Framestore is responsible for recent box office hits Gravity and Iron Man 3 and also provided the title sequence for James Bond feature Skyfall. The company has deployed high performance, end-to-end Dell solutions in support of current, big-budget projects such as RoboCop and Edge of Tomorrow.

Framestore selected Dell to provide infrastructure equipment for its new Montreal office following a longstanding partnership in the UK.

The company said the new office, built from scratch, needed to be completed quickly due to significant upcoming projects.

Framestore said the new studio facility, financed by Dell Financial Services, means it can now accommodate new film opportunities while also gaining access to a new and talented North American creative community of artists and engineers.

Framestore’s chief technical officer SteveMacPherson said he was pleased with the performance of Dell’s Precision workstations.

“Our entire machine room was commissioned with Dell’s participation – racks, cooling, storage and rendering – all this combined to make the planning process straightforward while the execution and delivery were both efficient and cost-effective,” MacPherson said.

To support the establishment of the Montreal office, including 150 new artists, producers, software developers and engineers, the company deployed the following solutions:
- Management of extensive day-to-day digital work such as image modelling, rigging, animation, lighting and compositing delivered by Dell T3610 and T5610 workstations.

• - Photoreal rendering and advanced physics simulations will be brought to life by PowerEdge M610 and M620 Blade servers
• - Highly-available remote access for Framestore’s London team will be made possible by Dell PowerEdge T610/T620 and R320 servers
• - Time saving access to the extensive catalogue of content will be delivered by Dell Networking M6620 switches while Dell Networking wireless solutions will provide fast and secure access to files
• - Daily creative needs of the team will be powered by Dell Precision T5600 and T7600 workstations, Dell OptiPlex 990/980 and XPS 8700 desktops with top of the line processors and expandable storage, and Dell Ultra Sharp monitors.
  
  Framestore said by working with Dell it was able to set up its new site quickly and easily.
  
  The Montreal office has been able to grow quickly enough to hold a third of Framestore’s UK VFX capacity in terms of equipment with this number expected to increase to a half in the near future.
  
  The company said the success of the Dell partnership in the expansion to Montreal has created a blueprint for the company’s global infrastructure from a support and procurement perspective.