Insight Community

Digital Asset Management

 

In an indexing situation, there are some advantages to purchasing a system out of the box, and then customizing that system. It will also help to view DAMS as an infrastructure component rather than as a discreet answer. As an infrastructure component, the systems that make up DAMS can be a best of breed, not tied to any single vendor. As a discreet system, the DAMS process is  then tied to one vendor, one process, and the growth curve of the software may not meet the long range plans of the company looking at the system.

 

There are a plethora of commercial and open source systems, the key to picking the right software is to have a team at the company have a list of must and nice to have systems. Then do some diligent research in the solution that has the Must and as many of the nice to have’s as possible. Then invite the winners of that weeding process and have them do a formal presentation of their product, find out where they are going with the next releases, find out if they have Open API’s for custom programming, negotiate the cost, and make sure that the software provider is going in the same direction that the company is going in.

 

Companies like IBM, Major Tom, Archive Storage Solutions, saepio, media beacon, and asset bank are all commercial solutions. Open Source systems like concerto, Flex DB, Alfresco, and DSpace also provide the same kind of functionality as the commercial products. The field is rich in solutions, open and closed source software, that will meet the stated needs, but depending on the availability of resources, long term goals for the project and the company. It is fine to want, but without a clear set of needs and wants, it is difficult to wrap a solution or a recommendation around the problem.

 

Commercial solutions: Depending on what the company really wants, the commercial solutions might be the way to go. The advantage of a commercial solution is that the company can help drive the future direction of the commercial product. If the commercial solution comes with Open API’s then the customer can write their own code around the commercial solution, and leverage the programs community to work out new functionality, as well as share solutions. The companies community and programmers who assist customers is a valuable resource, that should be included as part of the deal.

 

Open Source solutions have many of the same benefits as the closed source, with the additional benefit of being able to go through every inch of code making modifications to the base system. This is great if the company that is getting the system has programmers who are dedicated to the project. Open source offers opportunities to review everything, and make modifications as seen fit. Additionally, those modifications can be submitted to the open source community making that product stronger, but at a loss of IP (Intellectual Property) of the code changes if shared outside of a notice that the company participated. The ecosystem and support mechanisms might not be as robust as a commercial product. If going the open source route, the company will have to make a commitment to that community, and may find itself both burdened by the additional involvement, and admired in the community for supporting an open source project openly and providing resources to that project.

Recommendations of this are to:

 

1. List need wants – what must the product do, then what would be great if the project did this as well
2. Survey closed and open source that most closely matches needs then do wants, a matrix of capabilities will do well here with a scoring mechanism
3. Determine the level of effort that the company wants to put into the project, how the project will be maintained, support issues, and usability issues. Determine if the company has the resources to complete the project with appropriate stake holders and executive management support
4. Open Bid – ask for companies to do an RFP on the project, with presentations, billing and support levels for the duration of the project. Open source companies can and will also compete to do this kind of work.
5. Pick the top three that meets the companies needs and wants
6. Ask them to present both technical and business to all stakeholders including key users, managers, and technical personnel.
7. Choose best product and ask for a 90 day trial, ask for support, get the system in there and see if the product lives up to the sales and marketing presentation. See what level of customization will be needed, how complex it is to install and use, the support and maintenance of the product. Involve the users of the product in this trial, see how well they like it. What do people want to change.
8. Negotiate with company, based on the trial, if the trial is bad, go to the second company, tell the first company why they failed, give them an opportunity to remedy if desired.
9. Have everyone agree on the final product, with what needs to be changed to make it work for the company. Do a formal project plan, budget, resource allocation, make sure it is something that the company can fully support or outsource.
10. Make decision

  

Indexing multimedia files is a tricky topic, of course, for the same reasons that spammers get away with sending carefully constructed image files that advertise v1agra and h0t st0cks -- computers can't "see" very well.  While certainly progress has been made for selected applications with limited domain (a simple example: biometrics services  like face-recognition), they typically rely on algorithms honed to picking out particular repeatable features of the image (hey, that's a nose!  That's an eyelid!  So this should be the chin!)  AFAIK, there is no commercial system on the market capable of recognizing and categorizing general images, let alone indexing videos frame by frame.

Fortunately, the story for audio indexing is much more encouraging.  Speech recognition has improved tremendously over the last several years.  The current "Holy Grail" of speech -- providing a transcription of multiple speakers talking conversationally, like participants on a conference call -- is simply not possible with current technology.  Even at best, recognition rates for no more than one speaker talking conversationally, such as a newscaster or a voicemail message, tends to be in the 50-60% accurate range -- not particularly helpful if you want a full transcription.  And most of the services out there now that provide transcription for conference calls, or podcast indexing, or the like?  Well, they work... but they work by using human transcriptionists to brute force their way through it.  That can be quite expensive depending on the volume of work.

The trick is, however, that often you don't need a full transcription, especially if you're trying to provide some sort of indexing function.   Companies like Nuance have an SDK version of their Dragon NaturallySpeaking desktop speech recognition software that can be used for what's called audio mining.  In essence, they can recognize enough of the big words to have an idea of what topics are said when during an audio or multimedia file.  For example, you could easily scan an ABC broadcast on the web and be able to show when (or how often) the story featured "President Bush," "Congress," or "The White House."  You might have a harder time picking out "Iraq" by itself as it's a smaller and more acoustically confusable word, but there might still be reasonable success... and certainly enough to allow a text-based indexer to pick up some of the more repeatable words and come up with a category for said video.  

There are many other analytics and audio indexing products in what is still a nascent market right now, and they often work with slightly different techniques.  Nexidia, for example, can look for specific keywords with potentially higher accuracy than the Nuance solution because it breaks sounds down into phonetics rather than trying to form complete thoughts and sentences.  Here's a related article.  Other players in the space include TVEyes (Podscope), and Podzinger (now Everyzing), which are all also trying to monetize this audio indexing capability by introducing contextual advertisements.  Scalability is always a concern with these applications, especially since most indexing takes place fairly close to real time.  (As in, expect indexing a 30 minute video to take 30 minutes on one decent machine, so expect to maintain a server farm that grows as the volume of your content increases.)

To my knowledge, very little has been done with these audio indexing technologies to conjoin them with digital asset management software from commercial vendors.  It is an obvious opportunity, but one that most companies have not invested in, preferring to find early adopters willing to build a system using their engine rather than having a complete solution to drop into place.  My limited experience with DAM systems have shown that they focus on capturing and storing the image/audio/video, but not on categorizing or otherwise labeling it.

Disclaimer: I work for Nuance.

--Jeff

There are some compelling options appearing at the intersection of Digital Asset Management (DAM) and rich internet applications (aka "Web 2.0", Air, etc.). Traditional offerings for robust desktop application or client-server based solutions from established companies like Canto, ClearStory and Extensis Portfolio are facing some nimble competition from web-based competitors. These solutions range from simpler, paired-down offerings, to full featured online-only DAM apps.

Web 2.0 DAM:

One of the more impressive online DAM solutions comes from Fluxiom. Created by the talented developers behind the "Web 2.0 Javascript Library" script.aculo.us, it's not just a full featured DAM solution, it's also a showcase for all that's possible in rich user experience in the web browser. Fluxiom is a web-based media management service that in many ways has a similar workflow to Extensis Portfolio. Users can upload any number of file-types, add organizational tags and other meta data to them, manage items in folders/groups, share with various permission levels, and deal with workgroup policies. Where it surpasses most online file management solutions to-date is in two ways: Ability to create preview images for ALL graphic file types (EPS, native Photoshop, native AI etc. are often NOT represented by actual thumbnail previews in other web storage solutions); incredibly destkop-app-like user experience for a web app. It's pricing model puts fluxiom at the higher end when compared to other online storage sites, however when compared to full-featured DAM software options, it is very competitive and some might argue more flexible in pricing and configuration.

Other, simpler, players in the online file storage and access: Box.net, Photobucket.com

The Online Office Suite Wannabes: Google Docs, Office Live, ThinkFree, Zoho
These aren't going to be direct rivals to the traditional DAM model, but rather they aim to be the leader in the "MS Office, but online, and somehow better because of it" space. However, the interesting side-effect of these online office products it that most of them include a document storage component that can be used to aggregate and search document, presentation and spreadsheet files.

Bottom Line

Pros offered by new online DAM competitors include:

• cross platform, anywhere, anytime access
• offline redundant, and often cheap, storage
• quick setup, quick launch
• various levels of financial commitment (subscription vs. long-term license)
• frequency of system updates and refinements
  

Cons

• Reputation, longevity, trust - will they stick around?
• control over where data is stored
• breadth of features
  

On the Horizon: Adobe Share could stir things up big time. If they pull it off well, it could run right over smaller players like Fluxiom, and really get the larger companies like Canto, Extensis, etc. sweating bullets.

Wildcards: Cheap storage vs. great user experience. There remains a big hole still in the BYOS (Bring Your Own Storage) category of options. With services such as Amazon S3 offering extremely affordable online storage, it would be great to see something that offers a powerful front-end DAM interface to an S3 storage account. Most online services marry the front-end file management UI with their own proprietary storage solution and pricing. Imagine a version of Fluxiom that allows you to subscribe to their UI, but pay for cheaper storage somewhere else, on your own servers even. Another wildcard will be offline support brought about by browsers or extensions. For example if Firefox offers support for offline use of web-based apps, then that could really bring down a huge barrier to entry for these online DAM offerings (http://www.drury.net.nz/2007/02/03/firefox3-web-apps-game-changer/).

NOTES:
A good aggregator of DAM industry news: http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleIndex.aspx?CategoryID=7

When choosing a company's DAM solution, there are five key criteria that should be evaluated. The relative importance of any criterion will vary based on the strategic objectives and particular situation of your company and should be adjusted accordingly.

1. Scalability of platform
2. Versatility of solution (media files supported, specialized applications)
3. Accuracy of results
4. Speed of indexing/retrieval
5. DAM System Type

The first four criteria are self-explanatory. However, the fifth require some additional context. Typically, DAM systems were designed to serve one of two purposes:

• Search Indexing consists of cataloging thumbnails of original media in an indexed database that can be searched using keywords. The source files are left untouched. At present time, most indexing approaches rely on embedded tags manually encoded into files. An accurate and reliable computerized method for visual query of still images and comparison of visual similarity of video shots to "create and embed tags into files" is an open problem with ongoing research

• Asset repositories store the source files in a secure database. Benefits include security, referential integrity, and centralized data management along with full storage management and disaster recovery. DAM systems based on the asset repository model are most suitable for managing rights and access permissions that include intellectual property rights, and structuring global access by customers. The centralization of assets requires significantly higher performance hardware such as high-end UNIX servers, substantial online storage, and very high-speed networks. Capital investment requirements for catalogs are 10x to 50x the cost of catalogs.
  

Based on the five criteria listed above, we have evaluated a number of DAM products to determine their suitability for the multimedia search and content management. We found many jack-of-all-trades asset management solutions. However, these solutions tend to have crude and rudimentary search functionality. For best-in-class multimedia search capabilities, we suggest you look into Virage for still-images and video, and Truveo or Blinkx for video-only search. Additionally, Microsoft is developing next-generation tools that may alter the competitive landscape in 4-7 years. Below are details on each company.

 

 

 

Virage
Autonomy, Inc.
19th Floor
Spear Tower
San Francisco, CA 94105
Tel: (415) 243 9955

The Virage video indexing applications offer an array of commercial grade features, plus additional specialized applications (such as surveillance video analysis). The system quickly indexes video and still images, and encodes it for real-time searchability. 

Virage is a wholly owned subsidiary of Autonomy, Inc, a UK-based company with a $2B market cap.

Cost of the Virage software is between $200k-$500k if used internally. If the system is "monetized" for use on a website, the company would charge $1M

 

 

 

Truveo, Inc.
An AOL Company
333 Bush Street, 23rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94104
Phone: 415-844-9000

Truveo powers many of the main video search sites including AOL, Microsoft, Search.com, Excite, and Infospace. In 2006, it released the Truveo Developer site, which provides a variety of APIs for 3rd party sites.

 

 

 

blinkx Inc. (London AIM:BLNX.L)
One Market, 19th Floor, Spear Tower
San Francisco, CA 94105, USA
Phone: 415 848 2986

Blinkx's accuracy in searching video comes from analyzing the closed captions and using speech recognition (English, German and Spanish) to generate transcripts. Image analysis is also done, though on a lesser scale. Their website boasts of 14 million hours of searchable videos.

 

 

 

Microsoft Live Labs

Sources at the National Security Agency report that Microsoft's blue-sky research is head and shoulders above other companies. Two products under development illustrate these advances:

• Photosynth is a tool that takes images of related topics and seamlessly reconstructs them into a navigable universe
• Seadragon is a technique that removes the computational performance barriers of image search and display

These technologies do not directly solve the problem of multimedia search - since they require a collection of related photos. However, as these tools are developed, they will be instrumental in changing the way we search.

 

 

 

Digital Video Multimedia Lab
Department of Electrical Engineering
Columbia University
1312 S.W. Mudd
500 West 120th Street, New York, NY 10027
Phone: (212) 854-3105

Academic research labs such as that at Columbia are developing new algorithms for content analysis. The Digital Video Multimedia Lab is sponsored by AT&T and the National Security Agency. Research focuses on five areas:

• Multimedia indexing and management
• Feature extraction and object/text recognition
• Pervasive media
  
• Authentication and watermarking
• Multimedia standard, testbed, and evaluation

 

 

 

IBM Multimedia Analysis and Retrieval System
Intelligent Information Management Dept.
IBM T. J. Watson Research Center
19 Skyline Drive
Hawthorne, NY 10532 USA

IMARS employs a multi-modal machine learning algorithm. In its demonstration form, it supports 10-20 semantic concepts over a mere few hundred hours of broadcast news clips. A fully functioning version requires a semantic ontology of 1,000 concepts - just to cover broadcast news. Although it is still far from commercial viability, the techniques employed appear very promising, given additional development.

 

 

Quick Square LLC
3510 Snouffer Road Suite 200
Columbus, OH 43235
Phone: 866-849-5844

Enterprise-grade multimedia management and repository, with keyword-based search and categorization

 

 

 

Artesia
700 King Farm Boulevard, Suite 400
Rockville, MD 20850
Phone: 301.548.4000

Enterprise-grade multimedia management and repository, with keyword-based search and categorization. Typical license costs $100k - $200k, with customization available.

 

 

 

APPENDIX: Technical Approaches to Video Indexing

Recent developments in indexing videos have used optical recognition software to scan video files for closed captioning. Speech recognition software employing neural networks and machine learning using “hidden Markov models” can index video files that do not have closed captioning.

An accurate and reliable computerized method for visual query of still images and comparison of visual similarity of video shots is an open problem with ongoing research at academic universities and private firms. Video contains an enormous amount of visual information with 25 frames every second, high VGA resolution, and a high color depth. A popular method to simplify the data analyzes key frames as a representative sample of a video scene rather than keeping thousands of frames. When there is motion or large variance in the sequence, key frames may not capture complete visual information.

Researchers are proposing an algorithm that uses motion estimation to generate a series of key frames based on detection of significant camera motion. Producing even a few key frames of a scene presents a serious indexing problem along with redundancy clutter.

The standard approaches are the “query by example” and “query by keyword” models. Research is now exploring “probabilistic semantic indexing” to accommodate concepts in addition to key words.

The Digital Asset Management Product Landscape

The Digital Asset Management (DAM, hereafter) market is in the process of completing a transition from a niche to mainstream. Mounting overlap between the enterprise content management (ECM, hereafter) and DAM systems brought about through acquisitions and product evolution has blurred the line between the two. As a result, the prospect of choosing a DAM system has become an issue for companies who in the market for a standalone DAM solution. However, some analysis of the DAM marketplace reveals that there still is significant value to be realized.

DAM Defined
DAM provides a managed life cycle for various forms of rich media. Therefore, DAM tools and products should be evaluated based on how well they cover the content life cycle:

• Create – Initially content is created and must be versioned in order to be managed by a repository.

• Review – Might integrate the concept of workflow where recommendations, changes and/or comments are added to content.

• Aggregate – Content is stored and managed in the repository for future use/reuse.

• Publish – Content is made available for access and distribution. This entails the inclusion of formatting specifics that correspond to target output and view modes.

• Archive – A set of rules which specify how content is stored within the context of a time period in which it is valid.

• Remove – Once no longer practical, content can be destroyed, reused or even integrated with other content within additional life cycles. Content may move in or out of repositories based on the definition of a workflow process or ad hoc.

The DAM market is justifiably similar to the Web content management market of several years back, where custom solutions are just as, if not more, common than commercial implementations. In the same way, an inflection point is being approached where homegrown DAM implementations are being evaluated for replacement by/integration with commercial products.

 

A Detailed Snapshot of the DAM Landscape

Tool Name: ResourceSpace

Overview
ResourceSpace is provided by Montala (http://montala.net/) which is based in Stanford in the Vale, West Oxfordshire, UK - between Swindon and Oxford. The company also provides Web application development – PHP, ASP, Perl/CGI, Java – in addition to a CMS system called Muse. ResourceSpace is provided under a straightforward BSD-style license that makes the prospect of making changes to the software and repacking it significantly easier. The application started as a development project for Oxfam GB by Neale Hall and Dan Huby and is in daily use by the Oxfam GB internal resources team managing and distributing 20,000 pieces of photo, text and video.

Elements critical to indexing multimedia
Search features: ResourceSpace supplies a search engine out of the box that enables quick text search across the entire library. Each multimedia resource is assigned a unique identifier that can be used as an individual reference. There is also an advanced search that furnishes additional options to refine and focus a given search using the specific categories and data attached to every resource individually. This form includes options from ranging from area of work, multiple countries, campaigns, events, captions, credits, classification and image format. Specific data elements can be targeted with searches that feature a high level of detail. ResourceSpace also provides support for themes which group resources under headings that enable users to find new and hand picked multimedia.

Metadata support: None is provided out of the box. There aren’t enough volunteer developers to commit time to this area. However, there are a number of ResourceSpace implementations that feature diverse user requirements. It is possible that the developers who are working on these installations will continue to submit patches and modifications which will grow the functional base of the product. Metadata is an area that begs to be addressed by an open source DAM system. MXF metadata importing for ResourceSpace through MFXLib (http://freeMFX.org/) is a viable option.

Integration and extensibility: As an open source product distributed through a BSD-style license, ResourceSpace lends itself to extension and integration very well. It is fully web based with no application install required. ResourceSpace is built atop a fully open PHP and MySQL base requiring versions greater than 4.4.2 and 5.0.15, respectively. An open architecture makes it an easy fit for combining with in-house projects and enhancements while a web-based approach lends the option of introducing standards like REST or SOAP/XML.

Additional Notes
The following [quoted directly from Dan Huby, owner, Montala and co-creator of ResourceSpace following a direct inquiry into its capability as compared to commercial solutions ] should be kept in mind about the viability of ResourceSpace as it relates to providing robust indexing tools for audio, video, as well as images and
text files:

“ResourceSpace was originally designed and built in summer 2006 to meet the needs of one organisation, Oxfam, to manage a large number of photos and accompanying news stories, and a small number of videos. So the focus on automatic indexing and thumbnail generation has been mainly on JPEG file. IPTC/EXIF support to extract content from the JPEG file. Since the open source release however, other users have had different requirements. ImageMagick integration has brought in auto-thumbnail support for a number of additional file types such as PDF, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. FFMpeg integration has added auto-thumbnail support for the majority of video file types.

 

Tool name: Fedora

Overview
Provided by the Fedora Commons (http://fedora-commons.org/) which is a non-profit organization, the word Fedora is an acronym for Flexible Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture developed by the University of Virginia with Cornell. It is not a solution out of the box and requires technical support. Fedora is a general-purpose digital object repository system that can be used in whole or part to support anything from institutional repositories, digital libraries, content management, digital asset management, scholarly publishing, and digital preservation.

Elements critical to indexing multimedia
Search features
Relationship metadata is automatically indexed into the relationship store. There is URL-accessible dissemination that queries various relationships stored to return its list of members. These queries can traverse an entire relationship graph, not just information local to the relationship metadata in an individual digital object.

Metadata support
Metadata and data are treated uniformly in the digital object model. There are a number and variety of metadata formats which may be stored as data streams, juxtapose to content, in a digital object. These objects contain metadata that express relationships such as membership in collections, structural associations and taxonomic relationships. Relationship metadata is indexed and searchable using semantic web query languages.

Integration and extensibility
Fedora runs as a service within a web server. Functionality is exposed as a set of web service interfaces. Fedora provides a set of core repository services but there are many other services which are valuable companions to a repository, including specialized ingest services, workflow services, and preservation services. The Fedora Service Framework facilitates the integration of new services with the Fedora repository. A service-oriented architecture approach can be used to add new functionality further enabling new services to be built around the core.

 

Tool Name: MediaBin

Overview: Interwoven, Inc., a provider of content management for the enterprise, acquired MediaBin, a digital asset management (DAM) company in 2003. Interwoven has an operating cash flow of $27.52 million, a leveraged free cash flow of $29.2 million and total cash of $188.3 million. MediaBin was formerly one of the best known independent digital asset-management vendors in the marketplace and the acquisition strengthened the DAM capabilities of Interwoven’s ECM suite. The Sunnyvale, Calif. based vendor’s DAM product line consists of:

• MediaBin Asset Server
• MediaBin Syndication Manager
• MediaBin Deployment Agent
• MediaBin Content Intelligence
• MediaBin Clustered Server
• MediaBin Presentation Server

Elements critical to indexing multimedia
Search features
Searches for assets can be initiated based on metadata, image content/visual similarity, or both. MediaBin provides the capability that exposes images according to analysis of visual criteria such as shapes, colors, and textures.

Metadata support
MediaBin integrates Interwoven MetaTagger Content Intelligence Server software to automatically insert relevance to items such as Microsoft Office documents and PDF assets resulting in more effective and relevant search results. MediaBin automatically tags incoming documents with precisely defined metadata based on standard and customized taxonomies.

Integration and flexibility
Interwoven provides well-documented C++ and COM APIs, in addition to a layer of customizable Web service methods that afford access to digital media services from within other applications, such as MicroSoft SharePoint or BEA portal applications.

Tool Name: ActiveMedia

Overview: ClearStory Systems’ ActiveMedia integrates an enterprise-class, commercial-grade business process management (BPM) engine along with Workflow Automation that automates processes along the digital media supply chain. ActiveMedia looks to broaden the reach and relevance of a DAM solution beyond traditional transformation, cataloging and repository services. Digital media projects, creative workflow, asset management functions, and email notification are all supported. ClearStory Systems claims that the J2EE/web services based ActiveMedia works in conjunction with other enterprise application functionality, such as search, video editing, and media processing tools.

Elements critical to indexing multimedia
Search features
ActiveMedia supports the search, retrieval, transformation, and management over 70 file types. Search of individual clips from large video assets is also supported. Despite having been ported to ClearStory System’s Enterprise Media Platform, the strongest aspect of its search capabilities is text-based.

Metadata support
Building on ActiveMedia's industry-leading metadata model flexibility, Task Filters move content through the approval process or make assets available to constituents with a simple administrative change to a metadata value. Also included is support for batch metadata editing for multiple assets. A metadata-driven security model enables on-demand access to assets. By where administrators can change who can gain access to an asset.

Integration and flexibility
A set of SOAP-based APIs is provided to enhance ActiveMedia’s capability to easily integrate leading technologies with a number of third-party vendors and custom applications. Since 2003, ClearStory Systems has demonstrated the willingness to incorporate commonly accepted architectural methods used industry-wide into a simplified concept of how organizations will translate rich media into mission-critical applications.

 

Tool Name: Documentum Digital Asset Manager

Overview: When Documentum, Inc. acquired the Bulldog Group in December 2001 it was to improve its DAM capabilities towards being able to offer a multifaceted product line that covers media-rich assets. In 2003, the purchase of Documentum by EMC, Inc. was driven by an explosive growth [and importance] of unstructured, non-traditional content in the form of multimedia. Digital Asset Manager provides a powerful set of media capabilities as an extension to its ECM functionality to rich media, enabling content management capabilities for images, audio, and video. EMC’s 2006 revenue figure was $11.155 billion with approximately 31,000 employees and 15 dedicated system integrators.

Elements critical to indexing multimedia
Search features
The entire Documentum repository can be queried using keywords and other metadata. Search can be integrated into workflow processes and applies to a variety of rich media.

Metadata support
Documentum automatically extracts various types of metadata and indexes those attributes for searching and categorization. Updates to these attributes via Documentum will result in updating the metadata in the content itself.

Integration and flexibility
Documentum’s Digital Asset Manager features integration with the rest of the EMC/Documentum product portfolio, but this level of out-of-the-box integration does not apply equally to custom developed projects. As a larger, publicly traded company EMC relies upon a network of system integrators to carry out custom implementations. Furthermore, EMC’s focus on integrating DAM functionality into an ECM-centric approach, leaves the Documentum Digital Asset Manager stronger as a component of ECM but weaker as a standalone DAM system.

 

A Wider View of the Entire Competitive Landscape
Below is an extended list of DAM-friendly tools suited for enabling multimedia search and indexing plus the associated vendors, in no particular order:

• Telescope Enteprise 8 from NorthPlains Systems – A recognized leader in the worldwide DAM market.

• Alfresco ECM tailored for DAM implementations – Not a recognized DAM tool but an open source ECM that is capable of serving as a DAM solution by nature of an open architecture [see - http://www.alfresco.com/]

• Artesia Digital from OpenText – suited for large enterprises.

• Communique Digital Asset Manager from Day Software – Features Web 2.0 design features such as an AJAX user interface. Particularly strong in terms of support for multimedia (video, audio, images, etc.)

Conclusion
A Digital Asset Management system helps organize digital media assets for storage and retrieval. When searching for a digital asset management system, it’s important to identify and remain focused on your objective. The priority of one or more of these goals should remain a guiding principle in sorting through layers of facts and marketing hype. Also, the depth of fragmentation within the DAM market has created quite a bit of confusion where many vendors claim to have a true DAM solution even if they do not, in fact. Yet, there is considerable potential for DAM solutions as the digital age transforms media applications across an increasing number of vertical market segments.

 

Notable DAM Consultant Houses

• Fallon Consultants (http://www.fallonconsultants.com/)
• Interflow Systems (http://www.interflow.com/)

DAM Softwares:

One might argue that the "DAM to beat" is Microsoft's Expressions, formerly iView Media Pro.   It offers low cost, a robust HTML output feature, and is likely to spawn a large developer community.    Although Microsoft support is legendarily expensive and sometimes problematic, it's important to have a long term support path for the solution you choose.  Expressions seems poised to become the dominant low cost DAM solution globally.  Thus other solutions should "clearly beat" Expressions to be favored.

Most of the DAM enterprise solutions tend to be extremely expensive, and I'm assuming you'll reject most of these on price considerations or lack of  web enabling features.  Another consideration is that companies in Europe may be harder to work with from a practical standpoint than USA companies.  This is another reason to look carefully at Expressions.

Media Mogul  
Brandworkz 
MediaBank 
TeleScope 
Cumulus
Portfolio
Picturepark 
FotoWare
VeriPic
Thumbs Up 
IDimager 

Software recommendation:    Without more detail about the online environment you seek to create I'd like to propose a somewhat "out of the box" solution that would build a robust infrastructure on top of existing web services and in turn use those services to help promote the company.   

Here's something I think you should consider:

Build all or most of your web-enabled application around the best of breed and/or most popular current *existing* online applications that are managing multimedia.   Thus Video files will be managed via YouTube or Google Video,  Photos via Flickr,  Articles via WordPress CMS.   Using existing APIs for these services you'll create an online environment that creates powerful access to your resources, but equally importantly allows you to use those services as social networking promotional tools for your project.    Even a superb publisher resource will languish unless it is promoted successfully, and inexpensive online promotion is now driven primarily by social networking and blogging.    Monetization of content is now available for YouTube videos and blogging applications via advertising and adsense, so you may be able to help fund the project in this fashion although this would not become a powerful source of income without very high traffic at the website.  

 

 

DAM Vendors:

TimeGain Software:  (I'm not sure if he does DAM, but he's a very experienced Filemaker Pro programmer)
Advanced Filemaker Pro implementations since 1987.
Your contact there is Michael Rocharde.

ACG's Magan Arthur notes a nice DAM implementation at DuPont:

The degree of separation is especially important for the interface or presentation layer. A good and publicly available example is the "Multimedia Gallery" on DuPont’s public website. Look at the navigation frame on top and you will see the HTML output from a CMS. But in the lower frame you have access to a repository of images retrieved from a separate DAM system via SOAP calls in the template. This integration was engineered in a surprisingly short time frame due to the clean separation of the UI layer from the core logic of the DAM system.

ClearStory Systems

e-see

Fluxiom

Picdar

Widen

Sources:

CMS Watch on DAM

iView Web publishing

iView review from DAM for Photographers

DAM on the Cheap

DAM Useful forum