DAM Lowdown: Cloud Brokerage, Marketing Asset Management, DAM Stew

By Jason Campbell (@jemorycampbell) Aug 16, 2011

The DAM Lowdown returns with the latest in the world of digital asset management: Cloud Brokerage is Coming Soon, A Focus on Marketing Asset Management, DAM Events, DAM Stew and the Twitter Shout-out of the Week.

Cloud Brokerage Coming Soon

Naresh Sarwan, one of my favorite commentators in the DAM space, writes at DAMNEWS about a soon-to-exist phenomenon called "Cloud Brokerage". Using an excellent piece by Stacey Higginbotham as inspiration, Sarwan discusses the issues and risks associated with "the proposition that cloud providers might become one-stop shops for all computer resources, including short term human resourcing."

As if we weren't meta enough already, Ms. Higginbotham based her article on a recent report from our friends at Forrester. Without diving too deep into the research from Forrester, the research giant was kind enough to offer this extremely detailed infographic to help explain the cloud broker business model.

The Full Cloud Broker Business Model

Sarwan goes on to relate the idea of cloud brokerage to the digital asset management industry. Like many technological innovations, cloud brokerage is well-suited to the more simple requirements of DAM. But, as the complexity goes up, the flexibility and feasibility of cloud brokerage for DAM goes down.

A Focus on Marketing Asset Management

I have touched on marketing asset management in the previous editions of the lowdown, and this week there are several articles focusing on the relationship between marketing and digital asset management.

First of all, G. David Dodd writes at B2B Marketing Directions about how marketing asset management improves marketing results. The most interesting part of this piece was the discussion of obsolescence vs relevance with regard to marketing materials.
Next, DAM Lowdown regular Widen shares a blog post suggesting that the usage of marketing asset management tools alongside a digital asset management solution indicates a more mature organization.
Furthermore, Naresh Sarwan points us towards a piece by Jeremy Sohn outlining three challenges for today's marketers with regard to media management overload and how to turn those challenges into opportunities.
Lastly, another blog post from Widen lists 5 ways that digital asset management is connected to all your marketing priorities.

DAM Events

This week we have an update to a previously mentioned event and two webinars for those less keen on travel:

The next event from the Henry Stewart Group, DAM Chicago 2011, is coming up on September 13th and the full agenda is now available.
Canto, maker of the Cumulus DAM platform, are offering a webinar entitled "Building a Better DAM". The webinar is on Wednesday, August 31 and will focus on the implementation of Cumulus by Harlequin publishing.
Createasphere supplements its offering of real-life conferences with a webinar entitled "Top Tips for Selecting the Right DAM Product". The webinar is scheduled for August 17th.