Media asset management: while the industry is currently in a quandary the future looks bright

Post, August, 2004 by Doug Mienke

In the '80s, I imagined of a day where all people would share and use a single copy of data for all end-uses. It wasn't exactly media asset management. I envisioned a post facility that could morph room usage by demand, day or night. The rooms would appear the same and have no dedicated boxes. Everything would be done in software and stored on hard drives. But, back then I recognized this wouldn't become a reality due to cost alone, never mind the fact that technology still had some late nights to go.

Time has passed, costs have dropped, software has evolved and networks work, for the most part. Progress in hardware, software, understanding and use has taken place but with all of this effort, are we any closer to the reality of a true MAM platform and application adoption?

THE BEST AT THE START?

General Motors, an early adopter of MAM, used it to organize an enormous library of marketing and advertising materials. It used an early version of Artesia and it was intended to organize these materials more than completely re-engineer GM's business. As it turned out, the approach doubled licensing revenues in the first year alone. GM's approach is a perfect illustration of something that the entertainment industry still doesn't get. Build it for today's demands and try to anticipate future needs. The rest will follow.

Today, too many great projects get killed in infancy because they expose deficiencies in existing workflows, terrify the technically challenged or try to accomplish too much too soon with too few resources in too short a timeframe for the wrong reasons.

TRUE ENTERPRISE-WIDE MAM?

An engineering spoof from a long time ago announced a new product from Sony called "The Brick." You merely had to place it between two devices to make them interface and work together. There was nothing "The Brick" couldn't do. In our search for the omnipotent solution, are we looking for the data version of "The Brick" rather than realistic, incremental improvement and change?

"Organizations, such as BBDO, Discovery Communications and Getty Images, would argue that they are already leveraging enterprise-wide approaches for the management of their digital assets with impressive results," says Adrian Willis, solutions architect, Artesia (www.artesiatech.com). "The industry has been criticized for monolithic approaches, which have too often failed to keep pace during the intervening implementation time with their evolving requirements. Organizations today are utilizing a road map that builds upon each success. DAM isn't simply a technology, but rather a process that is core to the enterprise and will continue to grow and evolve over time."

Terry Gordica, a consultant with Tactical TV agrees. "I'm sure there will be several attempts made by industry groups to create and promote the adoption of a standardized system. Human nature and individual company vision will likely dictate the continuance of proprietary systems."

Doug Cheek, owner/CEO of GTN (www.gtninc.com) in Detroit, believes we're at least five to eight years away from an enterprise-wide solution. But rather than a mainstream initiative, it may appear, "initially as a research project or a department-based innovation. Benefits are recognized and spread to other business units citing unified efficiencies. The distributed media management activity becomes problematic for enterprise participation. Analysis of needs and evaluation of vendor solutions will direct companies to single source or internal development. Companies uncomfortable with capital and resource outlay will consider managed networks and application service providers."

Can service providers create a responsive solution for groups such as GTN?

This is a huge issue for many organizations, one that sometimes has some interesting interpretations. "There are and always will be two types of MAM: 'DMAM' [digital media asset management] and 'PMAM' [physical media asset management]. PMAM and DMAM are complementary. There is no way of storing props of a film set in a DMAM system. However, storing a proxy in a DMAM makes sense in order to manage the PMAM better," says Ruedi Aschwanden, founder, CTO, VP technology of MidNet Inc. (www.midnetinc.com). "I believe the answer for DMAM is 'no.' The fact of the matter is that the standards for digital media are in flux. The position of a MAM system and/or MAM vendors is that they have to catch up with what evolves as de facto standards that often are a result of skunk works."

ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS

According to Hugh Heinsohn, president of Xytech Systems (www.xytechsystems.com), "The needs of the various groups are too diverse and incompatible." Heinsohn has been around this world a while and knows why it sometimes doesn't work. "Politics make it very difficult to implement enterprise-level systems. The costs to develop and implement outweigh the benefits." He believes that attempts with some success will be made but, "the users have very different sets of [real] business and technical requirements that will result in a compromise solution--there is no "one-size-fits-all.'"