DAM Lowdown: SDL Buys Into DAM Game, a New Developer Network is Launched, Quick Hits

By Jason Campbell (@jemorycampbell) May 11, 2011

After a far too brief holiday, the DAM Lowdown returns with: SDL's acquisition of Calamares, FocusOPEN launches a developer network, Createasphere hosts an open source DAM seminar, NorthPlains extends TeleScope via partnership and Quick Hits.

SDL Acquires DAM Capabilities via Calamares

The most interesting news of the week comes from web content management vendor SDL (news, site) and the announcement of the acquisition of SaaS DAM provider, Calamares.

A former colleague of ours, and founder of this very column, Irina Guseva, writes at the Real Story Group blog about the deal and clears up some misconceptions about Calamares. The key takeaway from Guseva's piece is that, while the soon-to-be-rebranded-as SDL Media Manager gives SDL a much-needed DAM presence, one must remember that Calamares is, at its core, a Video Asset Management system.

While this move by SDL may not bring it the same breadth of DAM functionality as some of its competitors, the company is much better off than it was six months ago.

Furthermore, our friends at DAMNEWS go in a different direction and highlight this combination as another in a series of events leading to the convergence of WCM and DAM. It only makes sense that users 1) are incorporating more digital assets into their web content, and 2) they don't want to leave their WCM interface to incorporate said digital assets.

You can rest assured that the DAM Lowdown will be keeping an eye on more deals like this one in the future.

FocusOPEN Launches Developer Network

FocusOPEN, the .Net-based open source digital asset management system purveyed by European software shop Daydream, is following the blueprint created by other open source companies and investing in the developer network.

Targeted at developers and superusers, the network provides Subversion access to the source code, custom-made tools and job opportunities. According to Emma Tappenden, Marketing Director at Daydream:

The increasing number of software developers who have already started to work with FocusOPEN will be able to share information, liaise with our own engineering team and contribute to the direction of our open source digital asset management system with greater ease. We will also be posting jobs and other system resources via the FocusOPEN Developer Network, exclusively for members of our rapidly growing community."

Joining is as simple as heading to the website and registering.

Createasphere Hosts Open Source DAM Seminar

Not content to rest on the glamor of the upcoming DAMMY awards, Createasphere offers a free seminar this Thursday where the New York Public Library's Strategic Project Manager, Barbara Taranto, is speaking about the efforts to manage and digitize the Library's collections using open source DAM technologies.

In case you have doubts about the NYPL's system or Taranto, the NYPL's collections contain over 65 million items and over 700,000 images. Taranto holds degrees in philosophy, computer science and digital information science.