Force India Formula One Team Speeds Up With Panasas

Panasas, Inc. announced that Force India Formula One Team has increased the performance and capacity of its engineering simulation solution through the deployment of Panasas ActiveStor storage. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are a critical part of Force India’s car design process to continually improve the team’s on-track, aerodynamic performance.

In conjunction with physical wind-tunnel testing, Force India relies on virtual prototypes and CFD methods to improve racing car aerodynamics. Maximizing the impact of its CFD process leads to engineering advancements that provide the company’s drivers with the best chance of a podium finish. The challenge Force India faced from an IT perspective was providing a data storage solution that could keep pace in this rigorous environment.

"With our engineers applying larger and more complex models, we were seeing a massive increase in storage requirements in terms of capacity and speed," said Adrian Collinson, head of IT, Force India. "We required a high-performance storage solution that met our performance requirements, was easy to scale as our requirements grow, and was easy to administer and maintain. After testing other solutions, Panasas was the obvious choice – the scalability, speed and cost matched exactly what we were looking for."

The Panasas ActiveStor solution was provided by UK channel partner, OCF plc. "Panasas is the perfect storage solution for data-intensive environments such as engineering simulation," said Greg Furmidge, HPC account manager, OCF plc. "Any customer that requires performance and capacity with extreme ease-of-use should be considering Panasas. It was the perfect recommendation for Force India."

"Panasas ActiveStor storage is now deployed at more than half of the world’s Formula One racing teams as well as many of the world’s major automotive, aerospace and general manufacturing organizations," said Derek Burke, marketing director EMEA, Panasas, Inc. "We have got the right balance of capacity, performance and ease-of-use that helps our customers to innovate faster and at a lower cost."