Will DAM flood the media? For cost-effective ways to manage and leverage content assets, here's digital asset management. But is it the solution? - Storage Management

Computer Technology Review, Dec, 2003 by Ken August

When the National Geographic channel was launched two years ago, it needed easy access to its archives--some 25,000 hours of footage shot by National Geographic cameramen since 1965. Thus began a digital asset management project that has streamlined operations and eventually created new business opportunities for National Geographic Television.

Defining DAM can be a little confusing. There's an overabundance of acronyms that describe concepts that are close but reveal different approaches: DAM (digital asset management), CM (content management), MAM (media asset management) and DMM (digital media management). DAM seems to have the greatest currency and essentially refers to a variety of solutions that offer companies ways to process, manage and leverage digital media.

"It's really about managing content and intellectual property," says Rona Levine, senior manager in Deloitte Consulting's Media & Entertainment practice. "It's about being able to find your assets."

Although DAM has been around for at least a decade, some new drivers have prompted more media companies to implement it. Some of these drivers are technical, such as DAM's ability to store rich-media files online at a low cost, and then transfer the files through high-speed connectivity. Other drivers involve market forces, including an interest in cross-purposing content to satisfy the needs of converging media companies.

In the case of National Geographic Television, it's a little of each. "We've gone through the process of taking material and creating a digital archive with streaming media proxies that can be accessed on the Web," says Matt White, vice president, film library for National Geographic Television. "It provides a way for our creative customers to research images and buy them for production of their own properties."

The film library is working with Convera, which also hosts the system, although that process is evolving into an in-house infrastructure. White explains that thanks to its DAM system, National Geographic Television is also expanding its holdings to include control of complementary archives of the National Film Board of Canada, ABC Australia and ZEF of Germany. This will provide a pool of library content that creators can go to without having to contact each group individually and strike a deal. Additionally, National Geographic Television has deals with Yahoo and AOL to be part of premium services for which consumers pay a monthly fee to get special video content. And they've contracted with United Learning to provide digital images around which the curriculum is built for its 20,000 schools.

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Not a bad return on investment for a technology that--until recently--got little attention.

The Vendor Landscape

Despite a plethora of DAM companies that have gone under since the late '90s, there is what some might consider an overabundance of vendors. Gistics, a market research company, identifies some 616 "DAM solution providers" and 1246 "knowledge asset management solution providers" in its latest report.

Some are pure players with name recognition: Artesia, North Plains Systems and eMotion. Others have bought their way into the space, such as Documentum, which purchased DAM vendor Bulldog for $11 million. Some, like Avid and Adobe, are more tools vendors than infrastructure vendors (think Artesia and North Plains again). Others, like Agari and Context Media, supply middleware that link DAM tools or databases. The bottom line? As Gistics' CEO Michael Moon emphasizes, "No one technology is the silver bullet." No one DAM vendor can do it all for media companies, although many are creating interesting partnerships to be as full-featured and enterprise friendly as possible.

One of the issues that the vendors have been working to overcome is the perception that some have tried to oversell their wares and have created chaos instead of streamlined workflow. "One of the top three challenges to positioning, selling and integrating a DAM system would be a host of graveyards of applications in the DAM landscape," says Michael Barros, vice president of business development for Artesia. "We have to overcome why the installations of previous systems didn't work."

Hassan Kotob, president and CEO of North Plains Systems, notes that clients are wary of the full-on enterprise pitch. "Many companies went right off the bat saying 'enterprise solution,' but with the architecture they had, they weren't able to fulfill the promise."

So, vendors are starting with a more practical, go-slow approach--practical also because, as a Forrester Research survey indicates, the median amount spent on DAM this year will be only $750,000; that includes software, hardware, storage, professional services and staff related to DAM projects.

That approach makes sense to companies like Gannett, which continues to evaluate DAM systems. "Today, Gannett has no unified approach to DAM or DRM [digital rights management]. We have yet to see a clear return on investment for these systems," says Gary Gunnerson, the company's IT architect. "Each business unit chooses the best systems for creating their products and supporting their customers."