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DAM in 2009: enterprise, workgroup, and nothing in between....

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Mon, 5 Jan 2009 00:01:00 -0500

Today we release our Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2009. In this new edition, we've greatly expanded our coverage of Minnesota, USA-based MediaBeacon, a pioneer in XMP, and a small but savvy company that's frequently competing with the larger corporate muscle of Open Text's Artesia and Interwoven's MediaBin.

There are quite a few new trends in DAM for 2009, which we'll explore in this blog over the next few weeks, and which we cover in-depth in the report. As we point out in today's press release, the most significant one we've seen is what we're calling "the disappearance of the middle class." Small team/workgroup-style DAM tools typically sell for US$2,000-5,000, while the enterprise-class DAM & MAM tools are rarely acquirable for less than US$150,000-$200,000. This situation is serious a problem for buyers who need more from their DAM system than a simple digital archive, but don't have six-figure budgets.

In these tough economic times, enterprises are looking to buy only the features they really need, at a predictable price point. Because the costs involved in a full-feature, licensed solution may be prohibitive, some buyers are turning to fixed-price hosted DAM, or stretching their workgroup-level solution -- perhaps from the likes of Adobe, Apple, or Microsoft -- beyond its capabilities.

Get smart and prepare for the impending DAM explosion

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 00:48:00 -0500

Today we release our half-day online education course about Digital & Media Asset Management (DAM) technology. As we learned over the last 9 months of research into the DAM market, speaking with DAM project leaders and creative professionals around the world, many teams struggle to determine the optimal way to implement DAM technology.

The course walks students through important information to understand prior to implementation in order to mitigate risk, including: key administrative and system management services, roles and groups and how security is managed, scalability, capacity and bandwidth challenges, the value of specific DAM standards.

The online course includes sessions on:

Introduction to DAM
Asset Creation, Assembly & Delivery Services
DAM Architecture & System Management Services
DAM Implementation Scenarios
DAM Vendor Landscape and Trends

As the course leader, I hope you'll "join me" as I walk you through the world of DAM, and please e-mail me if you have any comments on the course or our Digital & Media Asset Management Report.

Innovations in Digital Asset Management, Circa 2008

info@databasepublish.com(Joseph Bachana) — Wed, 7 May 2008 15:51:00 -0400

The Digital Asset Management (DAM) marketplace doesn't receive a lot of attention, but DPCI's Joseph Bachana argues that some very interesting developments are transpiring. The problem is, no single vendor has a lock on how to combine all these innovations into a comprehensive offering...

Announcing The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2008

tregli@cmswatch.com(Theresa Regli) — Wed, 7 May 2008 08:34:00 -0400

I'm thrilled to announce the launch of The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2008. While we've followed DAM and blogged quite a bit about DAM and MAM (Media Asset Management) over our 7-year history, this report represents our first comprehensive comparative evaluation of 18 DAM tools, and our first aggregation of DAM and MAM best practices.

Subscribers, you'll be getting your copy shortly; others can download a free sample here.

For several evaluations of major enterprise DAM vendors (Open Text's Artesia, Interwoven's MediaBin, EMC's Documentum Digital Asset Manager, and the IBM FileNet / Ancept Media Server pairing), we built on the foundational DAM research in our ECM Suites Report 2008. We then looked at several pure-play DAM vendors, including ClearStory, North Plains, Canto, WAVE, Widen, and ADAM. You can see the full list of vendors covered here.

As always, the core of our research centers on talking with customers, the real everyday users of DAM systems. Our goal is to cut through the marketing hype and report people's real-world experience with the tools, and help you, the buyer and implementer, understand which tools are most appropriate for which situations. As with all the technologies we cover, the DAM industry has seen many failed or abandoned investments because of poor product selection or implementation practices. We want you to go into your product selection and implementation with full knowledge of a product's strengths and weaknesses.

My fellow DAM analyst Kas Thomas and I will blog a lot more about DAM and MAM in the coming months. We both had a great time putting this report together, as it's a rather fun and sexy technology. We also hope to see you at the Henry Stewart DAM Symposium in New York City next week; my Wednesday tutorial, "Sorting Out the Content Technology Marketplace," will present an overview of this new research, along with some of our latest ECM and WCM findings, as well.