Apple Snags Leading Digital Asset Management Firm

By Seth Weintraub | Published Dec 5, 2006

Apple-Proximity Proximity Group, one of the leading Video asset management firms with offices in London, New York and Sydney, has been acquired by Apple, according to their website.

Apple, widely rumored to be moving more aggressively into the asset management, document management and workflow space for awhile now, was most likely after Proximity Group's Flagship product called Artbox.

Proximity's Artbox Workgroup and Artbox Enterprise are the industry standard for the management and storage of media content and have won a Technology Emmy (Oct 2002). Proximity products have a proven track record with installations in over 150 broadcasters across 16 countries.

In addition, this tool also features a content management module, which allows the user to search EDL’s media across multiple platforms and formats.

What does this mean for the Cupertino company? Well, on the surface it looks like Apple is pushing further into the broadcast business backend market. Perhaps if we look a little more into the future however, we'll see that this technology could bridge the gap between traditional media and Apple's large consumer iPod/iTV/iTunes value chain.

Proximity was established in 1997 and operates offices in Oakland, New York, London and Sydney. The company maintains close relationships with virtually all the major vendors in the broadcasting industry, enabling the company to provide comprehensive media asset management solutions across heterogeneous (not for long!) platforms to its customers.