I'm Scott Morrison, CTO of NetApp, and I'm here with a couple of the good guys, two legends in the animation industry. I've got Bill Belaloo, who's the CTO of DreamWorks, and I've got Scotty Miller, the technology fellow here at DreamWorks. Guys, I'm thrilled to be here talking to you. So, Bill, tell me, you've had a long and very,storied career here. Tell me a bit about your journey and how that's informed your vision of what you want to bring to DreamWorks.>> Yeah, thanks Scott. So, you know, my journey here started in 1996 and the '9s were all about a resurgence in animation and something switched, right? I was a computer science major and I loved computer science, but I also kind of had this passion for animation. And uh what I got hooked on is this collaboration with the artist. The artist would say, "I want to do this thing, but I don't know how to do it." And then the technologist would come in and they provide a solution to it. And then the artist would take our solution and they do something completely different with it. Art challenges the technology and the technology kind of provides inspiration back to the art and it keeps cycling. We almost become a laboratory of being able to try new things and that's the innovation that we do at DreamWorks and it's kind of in our DNA. Now, Scotty, tell me about things that are coming up on the next horizon, new technologies that, you know, are potentially going to change everything. >> Uh, the next big thing for us is the recognition that audiences want content. Audiences want short form television content, they want long- form films, they want games, they want technologydriven things they've never seen before. So, we need to extend our reach. One of the technologies that's most exciting for me is the use of hybrid cloud as a way to extend uh to multiple geographies. Animation is a very collaborative sport and to have everyone together uh bouncing ideas off each other, working in the same room on the same content is incredibly compelling, but we do know that we don't have enough resources on this campus to do everything our ambition wants. So the hybrid cloud as an enabler to access digital and artistic resources globally is very compelling. Well, listen, Bill, let's pick up on thatwhole idea of change and technological change because it impacts every part of the business from, you know, the administration to the creatives. So, how do you see tech change over the next while basically changing the efficiencies and, you know, opening up new possibilities for creative expression? At our heart, we'reum a studio that's driven by filmmakers and you know, we deliver content that inspires and you know, we wanted to have cultural impact and we actually wanted to attract other filmmakers back into the studio. uh content continues to be in high demand and so the thing that the studio is really going after is a model of flexibility with the form that we release our content in the budgets the schedules uh all of it needs to be really adapting to what the changes in the uh in the whole environment are for us there really three areas that we can focus on to help with that kind of flexibility uh one is around scale our scale for the studio for features is about twoto three films that we release each year. So we want to have an infrastructure that can expand out when we need to. The other place that we really invest technology is around streamlining workflows. How can we make our artists very efficient? The third area is for us is really about the creativity itself. It's how can we empower our artists to use kind of technology as the paintbrush. they work in kind of highfidelity uh real-time kind of versions of the content in their point in the pipeline. >> You know, I love that idea of technologies paintbrush asa as a great enabler. Now, we've been working together between NetApp and DreamWorks for a number of years now. How do you see that partnership? How do you see the value of that partnership playing out with DreamWorks? >> Each film progresses in terms of itscomplexity and in terms of what we're delivering to the audiences. So the partnership that we have uh like the one withNetApp is so critical for us to be able to expand what we can do and with that innovation and oftentimes it accelerates our innovation here. So the partnership isn't a transactional one. It's actually a partnership where we're creating things together and when you can achieve that it'salmost like lightning in a bottle. It's not just about the technology. It's also about the people that we're partnering with. the people have just an innovative spirit uh you know focus on excellence in engineering and are also focused on those business outcomes and that's really critical for us to have those outcomes as well and not just be you know we're not just innovating for innovation sake we're always aligning it back to our business goals >> well listen that um that's great to hear and I'm it's something that we're really excited about um at NetApp as well now Scotty this partnership between NetApp and DreamWorks let's talk about the technological change that you've seen andwhat's really stood out for you. >> We've been a NetApp customer on every one of our CG feature films since the very beginning. Every DreamWorks film you've seen on screen uh was born, created, and still lives to this day on a NetApp storage system. Um it's been an amazing customer vendor relationship. the cloud and the direction that we needed to take the studio for scale and for geographic reach and for our content ambition meant we needed a partner who thought the same way we did NetApp's cloud vision the things that the company's trying to do to be a cloud services provider a cloud data management platform exactly matched what DreamWorks was trying to do with the cloud probably thebiggest technology change has been the audience expectation driving the technology to have higher fidelity higher quality on-screen content and uh more compelling storylines that we can make that fit within the business goals. Our films can consume between 150 300 million compute hours per film over the four years of their lifetime depending on the complexity and the on on-screen content of that particular film and as many as 500 million files per film. Bill mentioned technology as a paintbrush. For me, file services are the factory floor.>> Both of you are obviously passionate about technology. What do you see in the future in terms of what excites you the most?>> So what we're looking at going forward is a brand new production pipeline based more on cloud-based technologies. So where NetApp can really come in and help us with this is running this pipeline in a cost-effective way and securing all of this data that we're now going to have not just within our hard shell security model within the studio. Now, Scotty, one of the biggest issues today in technology is talent andtrying to find it, build it, retain it. You know, it doesn't matter whether you're in animation or whether you're in hybrid cloud business like I am. You know, finding good people is hard. What do you guys do about that? >> We try to uh attract and retain talent through our partnerships with companies like NetApp by having the leading edge technology on premises and the leading edge cloud hybrid cloud footprint for animation creation. uh people who want to use those technologies are excited to come here. Most people on the outside don't realize how uh how much technology is used in an animated film. They think it's, you know, drawing some pictures and clicking a button. But it's an enormous infrastructure run by talented, passionate uh engineers and artists to create these films. I think going forward, the technologies that let us tell the story without being encumbered by technology or being encumbered by my computer system are really going to make the difference. >> I love that. Goodtechnology should disappear. that you become invisible. Well, listen guys, it's been a tremendous pleasure. It's been a lot of fun to come here and talk to you. So, thank you for joining us. >> Thank you. Thanks, Scott. >> Now, if you'd like to know more about the whole DreamWorks NetApp partnership, go to netapp.tv.