Content Management Matters ™

At the EMC World conference in Vegas, EMC unveiled their latest plans and roadmap for content management and collaboration including tighter integration of new products with the Documentum platform and a new SaaS model designed for SMBs. It sounds like a very busy year ahead for these folks, almost too busy.

Busy group of analysts over at CMS Watch these days, releasing reports like crazy. They must be getting ready for a hot summer hiatus.

The latest report to come out is called The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2008. It reviews 10 of the leading DAM vendors in the market today as well as 8 specialty and up-and-coming vendors.

Provider of online publishing solutions, Nstein Technologies Inc. has announced the acquisition of UK-based Picdar, a picture and digital asset management provider.

Nstein, who is headquartered in Montreal, Canada is broadening it's presence in the UK and Europe with this new acquisition selling itself as a leader in online publishing solutions.

The ink is barely dry on the cheque, but already Fatwire's takeover of Infostoria is reaping tangible reward.

The Web CMS developer has plundered the Infostoria locker in double-quick time, and the result is Fatwire TeamUp, a spanking new collaboration platform that ticks all the right Enterprise 2.0 boxes.

Ogrant, a name that sooner brings the weedy horrors of The Handmaid's Tale to mind than collaboration-oriented student loans, has chosen the Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network to improve its media applications process.

Toronto-based Ogrant is a collective of grant-providing entities that enables students to apply for grants and scholarships by letting them turn in videos and images in lieu of transcripts, letters of rec and essays. Ogrant members then vote for applicants that deserve a grant, based on their media submission.

Nirvanix's service is used to store and deliver the interactive entries developed by applicants.

Government institutions and higher education purveyors have major content issues. Increasingly, they're turning to the pros to help assist them - not a bad deal for the enterprise and Web CMS industries at large.

With this in mind, content infrastructure vendor Day was selected by Oklahoma University to assist in developing the institution's online personality across a user-scape of over 17,000 unique daily visitors.

YUDU Media just launched a publishing platform that enables publishers of any size to build online worlds out of traditional media.

There's no business like show business. On the back end of all the broadcasting fun, though, lies the ubiquitous digital asset management problem -- a problem akin to having too may DVDs, nowhere to store them and nothing good enough to play them on. On a much larger scale, that is.

Artesia Digital Media Group, a DAM vendor acquired by Open Text three years ago, just got snuggly with Front Porch Digital, a global market leader in content storage management solutions for the broadcast community. Together they'll provide customers with an integrated video management and storage solution.

Day Software just announced financials for Q1, which ended March 31. Promising results yield king-sized expectations for quarters to come.

The financial summary reports a 24 percent revenue increase from 2006, and a net income increase to 38 percent.

Today at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) show in Las Vegas -- our dearest little spot in the West -- Microsoft will unwrap a new media asset management offering built on their SharePoint (MOSS) 2007 platform.

The new Interactive Media Manager product is (perhaps predictably) hailed by the company as a next-generation content management solution. It combines digital work flows and media application integration in a collaborative environment built on SharePoint's core strengths.