FotoWare, an Oslo, Norway-based Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution provider, has made its first acquisition of another DAM vendor, Picturepark of Buchs, Switzerland.
FotoWare and Picturepark provide companies the ability to organize, exchange and integrate all their digital assets into other systems.
“Our Digital Asset Management solutions help these organizations to develop a content ecosystem that makes it easy for those working with photos, videos, graphics and all other digital assets to store, manage, find and share them and achieve their business goals,” Anne Gretland, CEO at FotoWare, told CMSWire.
Why This Acquisition and Why Now?
One of the main attractions for the acquisition was that each company shared many similarities in outlook and background, according to Ramon Forster, general manager at Picturepark.
“It was important for us to be acquired by a company with similar values and goals as we have in Picturepark,” Forster said. “That is exactly what we have found with FotoWare. Both companies are also pioneers of the Digital Asset Management industry and have never lost that innovative spark, which was also an attraction."
The acquisition allows FotoWare to share technologies and widen its network of technology partners, Forster added. The acquisition will also provide Picturepark with access to greater resources in order to scale, helping to attract more customers with more marketing and sales power, and a partner and re-seller network across Europe, North and South America, Asia and Oceania.
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Integration Plans Underway
This is FotoWare’s fifth acquisition. Over the last 18 months, it has added technical expertise and sales resources in key markets through the acquisitions of Buildpix (Sweden), InfoMAX (Denmark), Xenario UK Ltd (UK) and Xenario GmbH (Germany).
“And now with Picturepark we are adding first-class expertise in a key industry for us in retail and ecommerce, and an important market in the DACH region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), while taking even more market share,” Gretland said.
Asked about integration plans, Gretland said over the coming months, the priority will be for the teams across both companies to get to know each other more closely, as they begin evaluating the best way forward with regards to products and services.
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“In time,” Gretland said, “we will look to build an integrated product strategy, and the combined team will seek out opportunities to leverage the unique strengths of each platform in line with this strategy and with the aim of developing an integrated offering that delivers unmatched value to customers.”
Each company wants to support customers to better manage the content lifecycle with regard to permission changes, metadata changes, version control, relationships, AI tagging and content discovery, as well as channel-optimized media delivery.
“We will innovate the way our users work with their content and make content management entertaining,” Gretland said. “This will free our customers from tedious tasks by automating metadata validation or content approvals, and other related tasks.”
Impact on Products, Workforce
Forster said it will remain business as usual for Picturepark after the acquisition by FotoWare, with its solutions standing as separate products within the FotoWare group, in addition to FotoWare DAM and FotoStation.
“The acquisition will be a great benefit for all of Picturepark individually and as a team, as well as for our product and our customers — and will provide us all with new opportunities to learn and grow,” Forster said. “The Picturepark team will continue to operate mainly from Aarau, Switzerland, as well as from our support offices in the USA, India, and Austria.”
Picturepark has a product lined up for release June 11: Rigi Release, which will feature a new welcome dashboard that guides users after login to relevant resources or shows additional information; additionally, the release will enable users to create, edit or remove focal points, create conversion presets for regular image conversions and automatically transfer ownership of content items if certain conditions are met.
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