DreamWorks Animation is enhancing its collaboration with Lenovo, designating the company as its preferred provider of compute services and workstations. This milestone strengthens their partnership through Lenovo’s integrated solutions. With a unified ecosystem combining devices and infrastructure, DreamWorks gains the computing power needed to meet the demands of its artistic and technical teams. Central to this collaboration is a commitment to service excellence, ensuring ongoing support through business transformations.
Lenovo’s strategic services have positively impacted DreamWorks’ production and business infrastructure:
- A 20% performance increase was achieved using Lenovo Neptuneliquid cooling, improving render speeds and enabling faster iteration cycles.
- A 25% performance increase of animation programs running on the ThinkStation P620s compared to previous workstations, leading to faster loading times and an overall better artist experience.
- With 98% utilization in its data center and 300 million compute hours for The Wild Robot, Lenovo infrastructure scaled to meet unprecedented creative demands.
“Based on our long-standing relationship and Lenovo’s consistent delivery excellence, expanding our collaboration was a natural next step,” said Kate Swanborg, SVP of Technology Communications and Strategic Alliances, DreamWorks Animation.
“This deepens our collaboration and gives DreamWorks the flexibility and operational scale we need to fuel our business ambitions and deliver world-class filmmaking.”
“This expanded relationship underscores the vital role of advanced, scalable technologies and services in powering complex creative workflows and meeting the demands of modern content production,” added Ken Wong, Executive Vice President and President, Solutions and Services Group, Lenovo. “It highlights the strategic impact of a trusted technology partnership in delivering the performance, reliability, and innovation required to push the boundaries of what’s possible in filmmaking and what’s possible in business.”
Unified Innovation: Expanding the Lenovo–DreamWorks Technology Ecosystem
Lenovo offers more than high-performance hardware; it provides a services-first ecosystem that keeps DreamWorks’ technology teams focused. Its scalable service model encompasses day-to-day support to critical artist compute deployment, ensuring enterprise environments like DreamWorks have the necessary tools and agility at every production stage.
- ThinkStation and ThinkPad P Series Workstations – designed to deliver the performance and responsiveness required in any setting, including modern film production, making them ideal for artists, technical directors, and other professionals.
- ThinkSystem Servers and HPC Infrastructure – powering compute-intensive rendering and animation pipelines.
- NEW: TruScale Infrastructure as a Service – enabling DreamWorks to scale compute resources on demand while avoiding large capital expenditures. The offering supports the full ThinkSystem and ThinkAgile portfolio and is tailored to align infrastructure capacity with production timelines.
Lenovo TruScale allows DreamWorks to retain the control and security of on-premises infrastructure while benefiting from 24/7 proactive monitoring, managed services, and expert support. As part of its services portfolio, Lenovo also supports DreamWorks’ sustainability goals — helping retire outdated systems and transition to more energy-efficient technologies.
And Infrastructure is only part of the story. DreamWorks depends on Lenovo’s Premier Support Plus for round-the-clock help, fast fixes, and minimal downtime. In a high-pressure creative environment, responsive support and expert planning are essential to reducing complexity and helping teams meet aggressive production goals.
Proven Performance: Technology That Moves at the Speed of Imagination
DreamWorks’ collaboration with Lenovo showcases how advanced technology fuels creativity. During complex productions, DreamWorks leveraged Lenovo’s high-performance computing (HPC) with Neptune™ liquid cooling to enhance energy efficiency and system stability. This allowed artists to iterate in real time, bringing intricate digital environments to life more swiftly and accurately.
Lenovo’s professional services enabled rapid scaling; what usually takes a week was achieved in just 1.5 days. Their robust technology supports upcoming DreamWorks projects like The Bad Guys 2 and Shrek 5, highlighting Lenovo’s influence on major productions.
Looking ahead, Lenovo aids DreamWorks in optimizing operations and workflows with AI-optimized infrastructure. While AI is not used for imagery generation, the studio explores its potential to enhance production efficiency, linking individual creativity with seamless studio orchestration.
“This extension of the Lenovo partnership is a key component of our technology strategy,” said Bill Ballew, CTO for DreamWorks Animation. “The Lenovo hardware solutions are incredibly powerful, and we are now looking forward to engaging with their AI teams to identify solutions that will optimize our compute infrastructure even further.”
“As production strategy evolves, the Lenovo-DreamWorks partnership serves as a blueprint for how enterprises can leverage integrated technology to scale intelligently and meet the demands of creative and operational excellence,” Wong added.