A failure to communicate...

I look at a lot of grid/cluster/render farm services. I haven't seen a lot of big success stories on the media and entertainment front, for a number of reasons:

- Bandwidth: render jobs have relatively large input/output files, and the cost of moving the files back and forth can be relatively high, compared to the cost of computation.
- Security: most studios are very concerned about leaks of imagery or data; interestingly, I've heard of large studios that farm out work to smaller boutique studios - who then farm their renders out to render services...
- Cost: Visual FX comanies tend to be much more sensitive than other industries (why that's so will have to be the topic of another post); "grid" services that charge an $1/CPU-hour (bought in bulk, in advance) are prohibitively expensive.
- Lack of persistent storage: It's not efficient to upload separate copies of shared source files (referenced geometry and textures) for every render. Shared persistent storage is the optimal solution, but it's not available with all grid services - and when it is, there's an additional cost.
- Application licenses, and proprietary code: the cost of 3rd-party apps (e.g. Maya, Mental Ray, Renderman) frequently exceeds the cost of the hardware it runs on, the license EULAs for these apps usually prohibit any kind of rental or service usage, and there's no persistent connection (e.g. VPN) to share local licenses. Also, advanced render pipelines almost always include proprietary, site-specific code, which presents a similar problem.

Amazon's EC2 service may be the exception - the issue of application licenses remains, but Amazon's S3 storage service solves most of the storage issues. If Amazon could provide some kind of persistent VPN connection, we'd be set. Their costs (currently 10 cents per CPU-hour for computation, and 15 cents per GB/month of storage) are much more competitive; the transfer costs for S3 (10 cents per GB uploaded, 13-18 cents per GB downloaded) are more porblematic, but at least it's getting closer.

A bigger question is, what does this mean for the business models for storage, servers, and application software? In the short term, nothing. In the longer term, I think this is a business model that will have to be addressed...

Synchronicity III

I was all set to write about the NAB trip (and subsequent LA visit) and the synchronicity of trade shows and business travel - sometimes things just seem to come together.

But this morning I was sitting out on the patio, keeping an eye on my daughter, playing in her new sandbox - just enjoying the sun, and catching up on some reading. And just having an hour or so of "down time" gave me more clarity, more ideas, and more opportunity to make 'connections' - in my head, and with what I'd been reading - than a week of business travel, trade shows, and meetings.

Design Failure

So, I'm headed back to Vegas for NAB, and I got asked to change my ticket from Sunday to Saturday, get there a day early for some meetings. Unfortunately, I bought my ticket through Cheap Tickets, and while I can change that flight, I would also have to change my flight the next day, because it's sold out...

"But I'm already booked on that flight..."
- "Yes sir, but I have to issue an entirely new itinerary, and I can't do that because your second flight is sold out."
"But I don't want to change my second flight - I'm travelling with someone on that flight..."
- "Then you can't change your first flight."

I talked to the airline, and they couldn't do anything - had to be changed by Cheap Tickets. So I said okay, I'll book another flight, on a different airline, and just eat the other flight. Did that, and called Cheap Tickets for cancel the first leg:

- "I'm sorry sir, this is a round-trip flight, and you can't cancel the first leg."
"Okay, well, I just won't be taking it - I'm taking another flight down the day before - but then I'll complete the rest of my ticket, as planned.
- "No sir, if you aren't on your first flight, we automatically cancel the rest of your flights."

How is it possible to do business like this? How can somebody have an interface so crippled, so useless, that it's not possible to make a simple change like this? It can't be that they don't want to be able to do it - they were going to charge $150 US in change fees.

Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice.