Digital Asset Management in 2009: Trends, Features and SharePoint Integration

Digital Asset Management is an important part of any organization's content management strategy. Whether it's used to support web content management or enterprise content management, the requirements for a DAM solution have gone far beyond just a solution for storing digital assets.

With more and more organizations focusing on the Internet to attract, maintain and support their customers, CMSWire thought it was time to take a closer look at what is in store for digital asset management this year. And we went to some DAM providers to seek our answers.

DAM Players Weigh In

We had questions, so we went to the industry for answers. Three players in the Digital Asset Management Market gave a look into the world of digital asset management:

• Eric Barroca, CEO Nuxeo — A DAM solution coming out with the next release of their Enterprise Content Management Solution, Nuxeo
• Julie Riley, VP of Business Solutions for OpenEdit — Open Source Digital Asset Management
• George Grippo, VP Media Asset Management for North Plains — a provider of rich media and digital asset management solutions

What are the Top Two Trends in DAM for 2009?

Support for video emerges as a highly demanded feature for digital asset management solutions this year, with a particular focus on the Internet. No longer just a solution for documents and images, organizations are looking for lighter weight solutions (than video management products) to manage their video assets. We see this as more and more websites offer videos and allow user-generated content in the form of video.

George Grippo of North Plains says that, " As the drive for video and other rich media types seems to be growing almost unabated, many DAM vendors are struggling to manage the special requirements that video engenders for DAM applications."

In addition, collaboration — Web 2.0 style — is another trend that is moving DAM away from being more than a basic repository. According to Eric Barroca of Nuxeo, users want to work together on developing this type of content, so features such as tagging, annotation for documents, pictures and video, collaborative filtering and viewing assets via a web interface are key to building a better repository of digital assets.

Grippo agrees saying that their customers are looking to be more involved in the creative processes earlier so workflow becomes a key feature along with collaboration, reporting and BPM tools.

Another theme that appears to be taking hold in the DAM market, as it is many other markets, is the SaaS solution. We talk more about SaaS and Digital Asset Management later on.

Julie Riley of OpenEdit also points out that open source is becoming a big trend for digital asset management. Now of course, as an open source DAM provider she would say that (and we are sure that Barroca would agree). Riley says that "Sharing knowledge and allowing developers to have the source code in hand empowers them, it drives innovation."

What are the Most Required DAM Features

There are many things a DAM solution can do and the required features tend to cover the basics first: expanded search capabilities via data mining and XMP (among other approaches), metadata extraction, multi-axis browsing and rights management.

Support for the numerous file types is another feature that DAM vendors need to consider. North Plains Telescope solution, for example, supports over 300+ different file types.

Add to that the integration with web content management systems (discussed in more detail below), browser-based access and workflow capabilities across the enterprise. 

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Tags: digitial asset management, enterprise cms, north plains, nuxeo, open source, openedit, sharepoint, web cms

Digital Asset Management is an important part of any organization's content management strategy. Whether it's used to support web content management or enterprise content management, the requirements for a DAM solution have gone far beyond just a solution for storing digital assets.

With more and more organizations focusing on the Internet to attract, maintain and support their customers, CMSWire thought it was time to take a closer look at what is in store for digital asset management this year. And we went to some DAM providers to seek our answers.