gridmarkets
Leveraging Idle High Performance Cloud Servers to Transform the Global Animation Industry

It is rightly said that collaboration divides tasks and multiplies success. And, the corporate world has had various such instances wherein founder duos have set the best examples to make the world believe in the power of collaborations. Another such association that has swayed the global business sphere quite significantly is that of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard. A new-gen entrepreneur duo that adds to this list of successful collaborations is that of Mark Ross and Hakim Karim, who envisioning their entrepreneurial dreams founded GridMarkets. It was their common vision for a cloud consulting engagement that motivated them to collaborate. “We joined forces to advise companies on approaches to leverage cloud architectures to computationally power market modelling algorithms,” elaborates Mark Ross, Director& Co-founder, GridMarkets.

GridMarkets’ existing service portfolio is an outcome of its founders’ vision to leverage the unused capacity of servers. GridMarkets headed in this direction when a client in particular needed significant computational power, in the 1000’s of machines, to drive the algorithms that predict market movements. The duo then worked toward finding a new approach to offer practical solutions. It is Mark and Hakim’s significant experience from the past projects that has helped them develop a practical vision for scaling both the suppliers of computational resources and those consuming it.Soon after, the company welcomed its first angel investors, executives at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, who identified the potential of the concept being worked upon by Mark and Hakim.

With all the essential elements in place, the idea, the experience, the partnership and the investment, the company headed for a glorious journey. All it needed was a market to focus its solutions upon.The team settled on the animation sector after an analysis and a bit of serendipity. The firm delivers this vision of utilising the idle power of high performance computing servers around the world to power animation applications at the push of a "print" button. “The application of this vision to the animation market gives visual effects studios a third choice: the option of getting their animation renderings done quickly, affordably and conveniently without the need for rocket science technical skills or high fixed costs,” adds HakimKarim, Director & Co-founder, GridMarkets.

The company blends the specialized skills and efforts of cloud engineering experts with animation engineering experts to produce the platform that delivers its service. While cloud engineers focus on integrating its software into the environments of its cloud partners, animation engineers integrate and configure the animation industry's popular animation applications atop the GridMarkets’ processing platform. “We are effectively SaaS enabling animation applications. While this is an emerging market opportunity, GridMarkets is bracing for significant competition. We will build competitive barriers by remaining cost competitive, by leveraging affordable idle global computational power,” adds Mark. GridMarkets delivers massive computation power that helps animation studios deal with their deadlines.

GridMarkets blends the specialized skills and efforts of cloud engineering experts with animation engineering experts to produce the platform that delivers its service

GridMarkets plans to leverage its architecture to serve other industries with computationally demanding applications. The company will continue to focus on automating the process of submitting, monitoring and receiving submissions, expanding the number of supported animation software solutions and build out similar solutions for other industries. The firm’s vision is to dramatically increase the inventory of idle global machines to which it has access.