Case Studies Hybrid Cloud Gives RWDI the Elasticity and Capacity to Respond to Revenue-Generating Opportunities

Edit This Case Study Record

	Hybrid Cloud Gives RWDI the Elasticity and Capacity to Respond to Revenue-Generating Opportunities

Hybrid Cloud Gives RWDI the Elasticity and Capacity to Respond to Revenue-Generating Opportunities

Technology Category	Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud
Applicable Industries	Construction & Infrastructure Utilities
Applicable Functions	Discrete Manufacturing Product Research & Development
Use Cases	Predictive Maintenance Process Control & Optimization
Services	Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services System Integration
Challenge	RWDI, a multidisciplinary engineering consulting firm, was facing a challenge due to its business growth. They had outgrown their on-premises High Performance Computing (HPC) environment and needed a solution that could handle their increasing workload. They had recently won a large wind speed mapping project across the Middle East, which required analyzing 30 years of atmospheric data across the entire region in two months. This required a million core-hours, significantly more than their on-premises system capacity. Due to the short project timeline, expanding their on-premises HPC was not feasible. Building out their own software and middleware infrastructure to be able to burst to the public cloud on their own was also not an option. They needed a turnkey hybrid cloud solution to expand their existing capacity. Read More
About Customer	RWDI is a multidisciplinary engineering consulting firm that specializes in the built and natural environments. They perform a wide range of engineering studies in domains including air quality, climate analytics, energy and water modeling, meteorology, structural dynamics, ventilation, and wind engineering services. They have worked on some of the world’s most notable structures such as the London Millennium Bridge, the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the Freedom Tower on the World Trade Center site, the second span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Taipei 101 tower, and the mega-skyscraper, Burj Khalifa, currently the world’s tallest building. RWDI is diversified geographically as well, with global operations spanning China, Australia, the Middle East, Europe, the United States, and their corporate headquarters in Canada. Read More
Solution	RWDI chose Rescale as it offered the most seamless on-premises/cloud integration that provided the most consistent front-end user experience for their engineers, a wide variety of multi-cloud hardware including the high-performance instance types that RWDI required, and excellent customer service from the Rescale technical team. To minimize disruption to RWDI’s engineering process, Rescale set up a back-end integration with RWDI’s on-premises scheduler. To run on Rescale, engineers simply submit jobs to the cloud by adding a few simple command lines into the submit script. It is a minimal change to their existing workflow that allows engineers to dramatically increase their simulation throughput without disruption. RWDI had specific speed and performance requirements. Choosing from a wide selection of hardware architectures from a variety of major cloud service providers and specialty supercomputing centers, Rescale advised RWDI to run on Rescale’s core type Magnesium, a high-performance architecture with high-speed interconnect. Read More Log in to view content
Contents

Technology Category

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Hybrid Cloud

Applicable Industries

Construction & Infrastructure

Utilities

Applicable Functions

Discrete Manufacturing

Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Predictive Maintenance

Process Control & Optimization

Services

Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services

System Integration

Challenge

RWDI, a multidisciplinary engineering consulting firm, was facing a challenge due to its business growth. They had outgrown their on-premises High Performance Computing (HPC) environment and needed a solution that could handle their increasing workload. They had recently won a large wind speed mapping project across the Middle East, which required analyzing 30 years of atmospheric data across the entire region in two months. This required a million core-hours, significantly more than their on-premises system capacity. Due to the short project timeline, expanding their on-premises HPC was not feasible. Building out their own software and middleware infrastructure to be able to burst to the public cloud on their own was also not an option. They needed a turnkey hybrid cloud solution to expand their existing capacity.

About Customer

RWDI is a multidisciplinary engineering consulting firm that specializes in the built and natural environments. They perform a wide range of engineering studies in domains including air quality, climate analytics, energy and water modeling, meteorology, structural dynamics, ventilation, and wind engineering services. They have worked on some of the world’s most notable structures such as the London Millennium Bridge, the Petronas Towers in Malaysia, the Freedom Tower on the World Trade Center site, the second span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the Taipei 101 tower, and the mega-skyscraper, Burj Khalifa, currently the world’s tallest building. RWDI is diversified geographically as well, with global operations spanning China, Australia, the Middle East, Europe, the United States, and their corporate headquarters in Canada.

Solution

RWDI chose Rescale as it offered the most seamless on-premises/cloud integration that provided the most consistent front-end user experience for their engineers, a wide variety of multi-cloud hardware including the high-performance instance types that RWDI required, and excellent customer service from the Rescale technical team. To minimize disruption to RWDI’s engineering process, Rescale set up a back-end integration with RWDI’s on-premises scheduler. To run on Rescale, engineers simply submit jobs to the cloud by adding a few simple command lines into the submit script. It is a minimal change to their existing workflow that allows engineers to dramatically increase their simulation throughput without disruption. RWDI had specific speed and performance requirements. Choosing from a wide selection of hardware architectures from a variety of major cloud service providers and specialty supercomputing centers, Rescale advised RWDI to run on Rescale’s core type Magnesium, a high-performance architecture with high-speed interconnect.

Impact #1	The ability to take on large revenue-generating projects and meet all deadlines, regardless of project size.
Impact #2	A seamless integration with their on-premises system that does not disrupt their existing engineering process.
Impact #3	A wide selection of multi-cloud hardware architectures and the flexibility to tailor them to changing project needs.

Impact #1

The ability to take on large revenue-generating projects and meet all deadlines, regardless of project size.

Impact #2

A seamless integration with their on-premises system that does not disrupt their existing engineering process.

Impact #3

A wide selection of multi-cloud hardware architectures and the flexibility to tailor them to changing project needs.

Benefit #1	RWDI now runs a constant load of up to fifty-two 32-core jobs in parallel for their wind speed mapping project, for a total of more than 300,000 core-hours to date.

Benefit #1

RWDI now runs a constant load of up to fifty-two 32-core jobs in parallel for their wind speed mapping project, for a total of more than 300,000 core-hours to date.

Download PDF Version

Overview

Hybrid Cloud Gives RWDI the Elasticity and Capacity to Respond to Revenue-Generating Opportunities

Operational Impact

Quantitative Benefit