DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

ImageSpan's LicenseStream Business Edition Empowers the Missouri History Museum and "Visions of America" Photographer Joseph Sohm to Open Their Premie

2009-10-27T02:29:00.000-07:00

LicenseStream Business Edition's Quick-Start, All-inclusive Service Lets Content Owners Showcase, License, Track and Fully Monetize Their Content Through Their Own Branded Online Stores

NEW YORK, NY – October 22, 2009 — ImageSpan Inc., the creator of LicenseStream, the market-leading licensing and royalty payment automation platform for all media, today announced that several owners of premier collections and libraries of images, including the Missouri History Museum and "Visions of America: Photographing Democracy" author and photographer Joseph Sohm are opening their content for business using ImageSpan's new LicenseStream Business Edition. The announcement was made at the PDN PhotoPlus Expo, the large photography industry trade show at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York.

Sohm, whose "Visions of America" book and companion multi-media "Photo Symphony" narrated by Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood offers a sweeping portrait of life in the American democracy via an epic photographic journey across 50 states, said he chose LicenseStream because it allows him to make his entire catalog– not just the hits – available online for licensing. His work can now be found and licensed at http://voa.licensestream.com. Previously, Sohm has been able to offer only a subset of his images through stock agencies, which he says operate on the premise that a core set of images typically attract customers repeatedly.

Built on the LicenseStream platform, LicenseStream Business Edition gives owners of premier collections and libraries of images, video and audio a quick-start, all-inclusive, Web-based service that allows content owners to showcase, license, track and monetize the full value of their content through their own branded online stores.

"With LicenseStream Business Edition, content owners can publish their content directly to their own online store or anywhere else on the Web and to global search engines, enabling anyone in the world to find their search-optimized content and pay for it with a mouse click," said Iain Scholnick, chief executive officer, ImageSpan. "This essentially makes the content itself the storefront. It dramatically speeds the pace of transactions and drives incremental revenues. Until now, media companies, libraries and owners of premier collections had a tough time justifying the cost of putting the head as well as the long tail of their content on the Web because the revenues they realized could not cover the costs associated out-dated manual licensing transactions. Now content owners of all sizes can make their entire catalog of media – not just the hits – available online to maximize their assets' value."

Missouri History Museum already has made available online via LicenseStream Business Edition more than 3,000 images, including a wide range of Civil War-era images, a wide range of early daguerreotypes and other photos and images related to American Indian people and culture, and images of oil paintings and artifacts related to Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, who headed up the first overland expedition by the United States to the Pacific Coast and back.

"We often receive requests from visitors asking us about the art and artifacts we display and how they can get copies," said Dr. Robert R. Archibald, president, the Missouri History Museum. "With LicenseStream Business Edition, we can now publish images of our collections directly to the Web so that anyone in the world can find our search-optimized images and pay for them with a mouse click. LicenseStream also has dramatically cut the time spent by our staff on searching for and processing such image requests so we can respond to requests in a day versus months, accelerating both of transactions and revenues while cutting costs." (Please see related release: Missouri History Museum Selects ImageSpan's LicenseStream to Maximize the Value of Its Photos, Prints)

American history teacher turned Producer-Photographer-Writer Joseph Sohm is now using LicenseStream Business Edition to license the more than 1,300 photographs included in his "Visions of America: Photographing Democracy," ($60; November 2009; Visions of America LLC/Midpoint Trade Books Dist.) a book that offers a sweeping portrait of life in the American democracy via an epic photographic journey across the United States. For more than 25 years, Sohm traveled and photographed all 50-states. Images from his "Visions of America" collection have been published 50,000 times in his lifetime.

"LicenseStream Business Edition enables me to publish my work directly to my own branded storefront as well as to the Web and major search engines in a way that also lets potential buyers license it on the spot," said Sohm, whose "Visions of America" recently won the Gold medal for "Best Coffee Table Book" at the 13th annual Independent Publishing awards in New York City. While requiring minimal investment, LicenseStream also allows content owners to retain a larger share of royalties for each transaction – multiple times the 20 percent royalty fee offered by most major agencies. "That key difference makes it affordable for me to shoot, metatag, process and offer my customers a much greater selection of photographs online."

LicenseStream Business Edition pricing starts at $5,500 annually with a 25% transaction fee. The annual fee can be billed one-time, monthly or quarterly to suit a client's needs.

Link to LicenseStream website: http://www.licensestream.com/licensestream2/Portal/company/press.aspx?pid=52

Are We There Yet?

2009-10-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

This was something I heard a lot this past summer as I steered the minivan along the interstate toward a destination that seemed to be moving further away the closer I seemed to get. I think this can be akin to the process of setting out on the road to a successful DAM implementation. As you make progress the goal may seem to be moving further away.

A DAM is a continuously evolving process, to quote an earlier post..."a DAM is an Eco-system." All parts of this ecosystem are connected and need to work in unison. A successful DAM evolves to a natural balance. So, if it's evolving how will you know when you are done and for that matter...what is the definition of DONE?

"Done-ness" is a state that depends somewhat on the size of the endeavor and the enterprise. Implementing a digital asset management project for a small media archive may have a completion that is defined as when all the existing content that was not previously in a digital environment is now digitized, searchable, accessible in its digital form and available for use within a business unit or enterprise as needed. In a larger environment, it may be defined in phases or stages with milestones tied to timelines, budgets, strategic business initiatives, etc. and may span over the course of many years and budget cycles. In some ways this may be more analogous to highway maintenance...by the time you finish filling potholes, it may be time to start resurfacing the road again.

So does this mean we are on a treadmill that never ends? Do we ever catch up?...or do we continue to repeat the past?

Yes...No... Maybe.

The point is that there are different stages of done and recognizing this, learning from them and reaping the knowledge benefits can make the next phases more effective and easier to accomplish..and so on. You will build on the momentum you generate and want to be able to tap into that energy. It should be easier to evolve than to invent anew. Harness the power of the lessons learned to better at the next steps and beyond.

I believe inherent to a media asset and technology project is the reality that we can reach a balance between objectives and the state of the art. As technologies continue to improve we need to refine, reconfigure, migrate, upgrade, recreate and reprocess, etc. All toward the continuing evolution of the ecosystem we've created. We become the masters of the Darwinism of the process. Dinosaurs evolved then came birds, fish, reptiles and mammals. Could you still be an efficient and competitive player in your industry if you were still using index cards, binders, mimeograph machines, 8086 computers, phone modems and pre-windows software? Maybe...but not likely. We've all evolved as opportunities became available for advancement within the ecosystem.

So are we there yet? We'll we're here now and the view is pretty good...but I bet if we keep driving in the right direction the view will be even better.

___

By Philip Spiegel
PHILIP SPIEGEL - DAM Ideas
October 13, 2009
Link to original post: http://spiegelams.typepad.com/spiegel_ams/2009/10/are-we-there-yet.html

Digital Archiving Tool: Amnesty International’s ADAM

2009-10-20T06:40:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

Link to original post: http://crlgrn.wordpress.com/
October 15, 2009

Amnesty International’s International Secretariat recently released an in-house digital archiving program called ADAM–Amnesty Digital Asset Management. The program, designed in conjunction with Bright Interactive, allows Amnesty field workers to upload digitally created photos, videos, and audio recordings into a central repository that all Amnesty members can access from within the organization. ADAM is a customized application of Bright Interactive’s “Asset Bank” tool which:

is a digital asset management system, enabling your organisation to create a fully searchable, categorised library of digital images, videos and other documents. It is a high-performance, cost-effective server application to enable you to manage digital assets – all that is needed to access it is a web browser (from Asset Bank).

The description for the product goes on to specify that the Asset Bank program that ADAM is built from is customizable, scalable, and multi-lingual.

Because the program is accessible through a web browser, field workers can submit their field materials from anywhere in the world, as long as they have an internet link (sometimes a challenge in the further reaches of the world). As users upload their digital materials, they fill in required fields for metadata and context information. Use and access restrictions are also recorded in the record for each uploaded item. At this point, uploading material into ADAM is voluntary, but according to AI’s digital archivist, response has been enthusiastic. The hope is that uploading material into ADAM will become standard practice for all field workers, thus streamlining archiving processes and making material readily available for AI reports and campaigns. This material could also potentially be available for scholarly and legal work by outside parties–always dependent, of course, on the access agreements that AI holds with the creators of the material and the individuals represented in images, videos, or audio recordings.

Currently, ADAM holds approximately 36,000 records, 159 of which are available for public viewing at the ADAM Web site. Though Web site visitors from outside of AI can’t access the full holdings, the public holdings allow you to see the types of information that ADAM users submit when they upload their digital documentation items. Information ADAM currently collects is as follows:

Descriptive

Title of the video, image, or audio file
Description of the content
Keywords, or terms for searching and cataloging
Campaigns that the item contributes to or was created for
Tags
Copyright type
Copyright credit

Agreement Type:

Agreement specifies the level of use that the creator of the piece and individuals represented within the piece permit within Amnesty International. Some items are publicly available and others are highly restricted.
Agreement Notes specify additional use restrictions not covered in the standard agreements preset in ADAM
Shotlist/Transcript information for video and/or audio material
Date Created
Creation Date Accuracy is a space for stating level of confidence for when the item was created.
Place Created

Technical

Size of the digital image, video or audio recording in terms of image density and/or memory space required for the file
Orientation of images (landscape or portrait)

Admin

ID, a catalog number assigned to the item by ADAM
Date Last Modified
Embedded Data
Collections
Categories

Getty founder knows how to develop ideas

2009-10-20T02:32:00.000-07:00

By Dan Sabbagh
The Times, October 16, 2009

Jonathan Klein may only take pictures with an ordinary digital camera but, with the help of Mark Getty, a friend who he met when they were both bankers at Hambros in London in the early 1990s, he knows how to build a company.

Getty Images, which they started in 1995, gobbled up more than a hundred small photo agencies and libraries until it became the dominant image library in the world. Then, a decade later, the picture went out of focus.

The South African chief executive for all of that time acknowledges that, after a decade of growth, “profits peaked in the two years before we went private” in July 2008. Getty was suddenly hit, not so much by the internet, making available hundreds of cheap photographs through websites such as Flickr, but by the problems facing advertisers and traditional media.

“Print began to suffer. It is the best market for us, we get the highest price per picture, and so revenues began to decline,” Mr Klein admits.

Getty’s share price began to tumble, rendering it vulnerable. Hellman & Friedman, the private equity firm, bought the company, which began life on a scrappy thoroughfare near Camden, in North London, for $2.1 billion in a deal that made Mr Klein $53 million and Mr Getty $38 million. In addition, Mr Getty’s family vehicle netted $281.3 million. Some of that money was, however, reinvested by the duo for a 25 per cent stake.

Mr Klein stayed on, while Mr Getty, the grandson of the oilman who was once the richest man in the world, has become non-executive chairman.

Mr Klein says: “We talk about strategy but operational stuff doesn’t bother him. He’s chairman of the National Gallery now, raising money to buy Titians. We go for cheaper pictures here”.

He reckons that it is a good time for Getty to be in private hands, not least because the prevailing environment is so difficult. When the company was last public — the figures are for 2007 — turnover was $857 million and net profits were $125 million. This year, he says, sales will certainly be down — “find me a media company where sales are up” — as demand for images from advertising agencies has slumped, although cost-cutting means that “profits will be in line with last year”. However, with $1 billion of debt taken on since the acquisition — only three times” underlying earnings, Klein says — net profits will be down.

With declining demand for photos used in advertising, which start at $200 per photo, the largest part of the Getty business is tumbling.

But that is not to say that there isn’t any growth in imaging. The company sells digital images, including those taken by amateurs, via its iStockphoto website, and demand is taking off. Mr Klein says: “In December 2005, before we bought the company behind it, the site did $600,000 of business. Yesterday it did $850,000 in one day.”

Its growth is not surprising, considering that pictures start at $1.35. But it is not the kind of price that will pay a professional photographer’s mortgage, even though they earn royalties of between 20 and 40 per cent per photo, or offset the decline in the traditional print photography business.

Mr Klein also wants to experiment. Getty is involved in a joint venture with Time Warner, reviving its defunct pictoral Life magazine as Life.com and sharing advertising revenues. It is the sort of diversification, Mr Klein admits, that public company shareholders would not tolerate. He hopes that, if Getty were to buy “new images of Hitler or Marilyn Monroe”, they would also be exposed on other Time Warner media, such as CNN or People.com.

More bizarrely, Mr Klein is also interested in music, particularly in licensing music as sound tracks for advertising. There are obvious parallels between the image rights business and music publishing but, with the industry so concentrated between the four majors, it is hard to see how Getty can elbow its way in.

Mr Klein says that Getty considered buying Warner/Chappell, the music publishing arm of Warner Music, before Edgar Bronfman bought it. In addition, Getty represents a few unsigned artists. Unless a big acquisition is planned, however, it is unclear how the company can develop a presence.

Getty’s real success, though, has been in consolidating what was once a massively fragmented market, and, in some cases, cutting costs at agencies when acquired. Its dominance of imaging — it is four times the size of main competitor, Corbis, which is owned by Bill Gates — unsettles some photographers. “In 2000 we employed 25 photographers, now we employ 125, and I don’t know that newspapers will have increased their staffs during that time. We are photographer friends, but not photographer cuddly,” says Mr Klein, referring to the fact that profit margins sit at 35 per cent.

In sport, Getty saturates events such as the Olympic Games, but makes its money by acting as the official photographer for the event. “We cover all the medal ceremonies, and take all the pictures for the sponsors,” says Mr Klein, adding that that is where the profit is. But, with no big international events in 2009, the year is not looking good for Getty. The company, and its backers, will have to hang on.

“Hellman tell me that their average investment is for three-and-a-half years, but in a recession it could take longer,” says Mr Klein. “We’ll sell it or float it, and it depends on the strategies of various media companies, and whether they see imaging as an interesting business”. And, he says, when the company calculates how much revenue is left when the recession is over.

_______

Link to original article: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article6877227.ece

Karl Fakhreddine Q&A - Digital Asset Management At Orange Logic

2009-10-12T05:47:00.000-07:00

Karl Fakhreddine
Company: Orange Logic
Position: CEO
Site: www.orangelogic.com

Describe Orange Logic in one sentence
We help picture libraries and photo agencies go one level higher than the canned licensing solutions.

When did you start Orange Logic?
In New York in 1998, then expanded the business in France in 2000.

What were you doing before that?
I loved to study so I spent a lot of time in school: I have two engineering degees and a medical degree. I also spent 4 years on Wall St.

Where are you based?
I am now back in New York.

How many staff do you employ worldwide?
12.

How many developers?
We have 2 project leaders and 4 developers.

Describe your Monday morning?
This morning, I was up at 4am to talk to the team in France and organize the daily workload. I actually spend a lot of time in product architecture because I love it.

Who was your first customer?
While in Med school in Rochester, my 'hobby' between two surgeries was to develop for Magnum Photos on a laptop in scrubs. One could argue that Orange Logic was born out of a cheap trick to impress the nurses.

Who are you running picture library systems for currently?
Photo agencies, news agencies, picture libraries and museums, including Reuters, Image Source, Art Resource, Artists Rights Society, Art and Commerce, George Eastman House, la Réunion des Musées Nationaux (60 French Museums) and others. We also work with well-known global non-profit organizations, it kills me that we can't name them because of their non-endorsement policy.

How are you dealing with customers wanting to add footage to their stills library? Some clients do incorporate videos into their library. Our products can handle various types of assets including HD videos, and audio tracks.

We are told the cost of digital storage is going up at the moment - why?
Hum, at least with us, it is going down.

What new photo library functions are you offering at the moment?
We realized in 2006 that our application had one of the widest functional covers in the industry and decided to focus on usability instead of functionality. The objective was for users to be able to use the application within 2 days of training. So we've rebuilt the application interface from scratch with intuitivity and improved productivity as main targets. This makes for a really enhanced user experience, both for those working with the application back-end and for those searching and licensing pictures on the front-end.

What one feature sets OL ahead of other DAM systems?
I would say the ability of our application to adapt itself to our clients' needs rather than the opposite. This gives our clients the confidence to quickly adapt their business model to the market as needed. We provide a service, not just a software, our clients don't have to buy anything from us and can stop using us any time (it has never happened yet).

If I am a UK based picture library who do I contact first?
You can get in touch with Chantal Muller (chantal.muller@orangelogic.com) or call her on +33 499 58 17 35.

What's the lead time to getting my picture library online?
It pretty much depends on what we're trying to build: a 2-story house or a 200-story skyscraper. The 2-story house requires a lead time of 2 weeks.

Can I design my own front end?
Sure, all our clients do. If you have a look at some of our customers' websites, you'll see they've got completely different front-ends (there is no comparison possible between www.pictures.reuters.com and www.imagesource.com for example). We've also integrated a CMS in the application so our customers have full control on their site's text, look and feel.

What do you do when you are not thinking about OL?
I cherish any moment I get to spend with my wife and 3 kids.

What magazines/newspapers do you subscribe to?
The Economist, Le Monde.

Which websites do you visit daily?
Flickr, Pandora and tech stuff.

Do you write a blog?
If only I had enough interesting things to say...

ENDS

About Orange Logic
Orange Logic story begins in New York in the 90s when the first version of Cortex was born and delivered to Magnum Photos, Art Resource, and the Artist Rights Society.

Our solutions now manage millions of images for photo agencies, picture libraries, media agencies, museums and galleries, NGOs, and other image-intensive organizations distributing and monetizing media assets on the internet.

Cortex3, our latest product, is the result of more than fifteen years of evolutionary solutions for managing photo archives.

By making use of latest technologies and constantly keeping ahead of new trends, we provide our customers with superior user experience, help them lower their operating costs, and increase utilization of their pictures.
www.orangelogic.com

Posted by Will Carleton
Photo Archive News
9/10/2009
http://www.photoarchivenews.com/archives/2009_10.html#003048

How do I explain what I do for a living with DAM?

2009-10-12T04:21:00.000-07:00

Posted by Henrik de Gyor on October 6, 2009
Link to original post: http://anotherdamblog.wordpress.com/

People will ask you “What do you do for a living?” If you work with Digital Asset Management on a daily basis as I do, there are a few ways you can answer this question. You could:

Explain what you do in some detail, sometimes boring and/or confusing the average person.
Blab on and on, creating more hot air.
Give your elevator pitch: a simple, concise introduction to what you do for a living.

Before I had a simple explanation meant for the average person, I also confused lots of people (which is unfortunately really easy to do nowadays). It took me a while to come up with this simple analogy. Here is how my DAM elevator pitch often goes whether I am speaking with an executive or someone I just met:

An inquiring individual asks the question, “What do you do?”
I reply, “I am a Digital Asset Manager. I work on Digital Asset Management.”
The inquiring individual often says “What is that?”
I say “Are you familiar with the iPod?”
They often say “Yes,” unless they admit living in a cave since 2001.
Whether that is the case or not, I quickly show them an iPod, scroll through its contents as I explain that “while this is meant for individual consumption of media (such as music, video, photos), I manage similar kinds of media (generally called assets). The big difference is we can share assets across an entire organization legally using a set of more sophisticated tools with a series of workflows, commonly referred to as DAM. This helps the organization save money by being able to search, find, use, reuse or repurpose what we already have in the DAM legally.” I show the how assets can be found using various information called metadata. With the case of music on the iPod by:

Album
Artist
Genre
Title

I answer any further questions they have, but that is my elevator pitch as to what I do for a living with DAM.

How do you explain what you do for a living with DAM as a user or administrator?

Equilibrium Releases MediaRich for MOS for Associated Press ENPS V.7.0 and Other MOS Compliant Newsroom Systems

2009-10-12T04:14:00.000-07:00

MediaRich For MOS Is The Only Video Transcoding and Visualization System  That Is MOS Compatible

Enables Creation of Web Ready Media While Integrating With MOS Protocol Devices

RAI AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS, IBC Booth 7.D31, and SAUSALITO, CA - September, 11, 2009 - Equilibrium®, a software and hosted services company that specializes in helping enterprise clients of all sizes to manage, monetize and mobilize content, today announced the release of MediaRich for MOS which is compatible with Associated Press ENPS V.7.0. Together, EQ and ENPS help streamline newsroom production of online content through tight integration of Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS Server. Existing ENPS customers may download a thirty-day trial version of MediaRich for MOS by contacting either Equilibrium or the Associated Press.

Equilibrium's MediaRich works with ENPS and other MOS compliant newsroom servers to automatically transcode production quality video for web use. This tight integration enables production and distribution of text and media content to the web using the same, seamless drag and drop workflow available in the past only to broadcasters. In addition, for each video or one of hundreds of recognized filetypes MediaRich for MOS automatically creates thumbnails, animated GIFs, as well as proxy images and videos. 

With Equilibrium's optional connector to MOS, the MediaRich Server can integrate with virtually any MOS compliant systems including Associate Press ENPS to create faster, more versatile, and more interactive video-to-the-web workflows. MOS is a open, reliable, and widely-adopted network protocol for linking news production systems such as ENPS with broadcast equipment; enabling journalists to see, use, and control a variety of devices including audio / video servers and editors, still stores, character generators, prompters, automation systems, content distribution systems and services, and special effects devices.  

Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS connector prepares content automatically for web deployment. After news organizations have posted their footage to the web, the videos can be deployed to any device, anywhere using Equilibrium's EQ Network Ad-Per-View™ Software as a Service.

"Equilibrium is very pleased to connect our patented scalable media processing server technology to ENPS MOS to drive on-the-fly news video out to the web to meet growing consumer demand for anywhere, anytime access to news and information," commented Sean Barger, CEO of Equilibrium. "By helping news operations and stations everywhere to automate processing and delivery of web video while simultaneously providing visualization of all assets in the pipeline, station news operations can save on labor costs and increase advertising revenue at the same time." 

IBC attendees are invited to see a demonstration of Equilibrium's MediaRich for MOS for Associated Press ENPS in the Associated Press Booth 7.D31.

About MediaRich for MOS
MediaRich for MOS is an indispensable tool for the digital media world that features a scalable, high-volume media distribution and repurposing engine. It enables newsrooms to automatically create, process and auto-assemble graphics, audio and video files dynamically from original source files and then deliver them to websites, wireless and portable devices.

MediaRich offers dynamic, on-demand, massively scalable asset processing and templating on a wide array of documents, images, CMYK files and video frames up to HD in size. These can be processed and deployed without pre-processing and without the need to create a proprietary format. It provides the ability to view over 300 image and video formats on demand.

Running Order Control
ENPS dynamically builds and controls a Running Order playlist within MediaRich for MOS. Changes to the Running Order in ENPS result in immediate changes to the sequence of media objects queued for playout by MediaRich for MOS.

Item Status
 MediaRich for MOS. sends real-time status information during playback and other functions that are displayed through ENPS writers and producers in real-time. This includes the use of a minimum set of standard status messages which enable color coding and the automated movement of the ENPS timing bar.

Media Thumbnails and Preview Video
 MediaRich for MOS provides thumbnail images and proxy video which are closely integrated within the ENPS Story display and editing windows.

Story Send 
MediaRich for MOS uses the full body of text within ENPS documents, including all media pointers and custom metadata. It also dynamically tracks the sequence of Stories and Assignments within active ENPS Running Orders and Assignment grids.

Media Awareness
 MediaRich for MOS sends ENPS a description of the media it stores. The description contains structured metadata and a pointer to the media object. This information is used by ENPS to return media in search results. Pointers are used to link media to ENPS documents, including Stories, Running Orders and Assignments using simple drag and drop workflow.

About Equilibrium
Equilibrium, the world leader in media processing since 1992 when it released DeBabelizer®, the first automated graphics processing software. EQ spearheads the monetization of the next-generation Internet and mobile video revolutions. The patented, high-powered MediaRich® engine enables real-time personalization and delivery of music, images and video to website, wireless and portable devices. Equilibrium offers breakthrough cross-platform technology solutions featuring interoperability and integration for the workgroup, enterprise and web-server, delivering the same MediaRich CORE technology for cross-platform interoperability and integration virtually anywhere. The EQ Network can automate personalized video delivery and monetization via advertising from any web video. Equilibrium is a Microsoft Gold Partner. To learn more about Equilibrium and its products, please visit Equilibrium, EQ Network or the EQ blog.

Extensis Offers Digital Asset Management Scholarships

2009-10-12T04:11:00.000-07:00

Extensis along with the Museum Computer Network are offering the Digital Asset Management Scholarship. This is a competitive scholarship awarded to a limited number of applicants. The scholarship will provide 50% off MCN conference registration and automatic registration in the digital asset management workshop offered at the conference.

To be eligible, applications must be submitted by October 9, 2009.

DETAILS

Museum Information, Museum Efficiency: Doing More with Less
37th Annual MCN Conference
November 11-14, 2009
Portland, Oregon

ELIGIBILITY
Anyone who is interested in digital image management! The scholarship is open to MCN members and non-members alike.

APPLICATION
Submit the easy to complete scholarship application found at the Museum Computer Network site.

QUESTIONS
Please contact Jana Hill, 2009 Scholarship Committee chair.

DAM takes on many roles

2009-10-05T06:29:00.000-07:00

By Judith Lamont, Ph.D., KM World, 29 September 2009
Judith Lamont is a research analyst and a KMWorld Senior Writer

The market for digital asset management (DAM) solutions remains robust, driven by increasing demand for rich media on Web sites, for marketing materials and in technical documentation. Ideally, assets for those purposes are managed centrally and published as needed to different destinations.

"DAM solutions are extending both upstream and downstream," says Melissa Webster, program VP for content and digital media technologies at IDC. "It’s less and less about the repository and more about the workflow."

The annual market stands at about $600 million, and historically has posted double-digit growth. GSD&M Idea City is a full-service advertising agency with such high-profile clients such as AARP, American Red Cross, BMW, John Deere and L.L. Bean. Based in Austin, Texas, the company’s staff of 450 includes a large creative and studio art department.

The company used a cumbersome, paper-based photography tracking system listing the photographer, customer and other information about the asset. Employees had to leave their desks to retrieve the CD or other medium on which the archived working file was stored. If a piece of artwork could not be found, it might have to be recreated, adding more agency costs and time to the project.

After deciding to move to a digital asset management system, GSD&M Idea City formed a search team consisting of heads of several departments, including creative services departments and IT. "This was not an IT initiative," says Lisa McIntyre, digital asset management librarian at GSD&M Idea City. "We wanted buy-in from other potential users of the system." The company then narrowed down the choices to three vendors that included both pure-play DAM products and enterprise content management (ECM) systems.

Site visits

Each of the finalists made on-site visits as the last stage of the search process. "We worked through several scenarios to make sure the software could do what we wanted," McIntyre says. "We did not want to change our work processes, just the means through which we accomplished the work." At the completion of the evaluation, GSD&M Idea City chose EMC Documentum Digital Asset Management solution from EMC.

Attractive features

An important capability was EMC’s extensibility. "We were able to put DAM into play right away, but we can also broaden into content management and records management if we want," McIntyre explains.

Integration with other products was also a major consideration. "The software has tools that allow users to work in their native environment, which for our studio artists is generally Adobe Creative Suite," McIntyre explains. "The DAM system shows as a file share on the desktop, and users can continue working as they always have." Business users can search for assets from a browser interface.

Now that the system is in place, users can find their assets much more quickly, and search criteria can

be used to locate files instantly. "Archiving used to take two days and now has been reduced to just one afternoon," McIntyre adds.

GSD&M Idea City is also working on an integration with SharePoint to allow a job jacket to be created in the DAM system when a JobSite collaborative workspace is created. "Eventually we hope for a seamless environment that draws from multiple repositories through a single interface," McIntyre adds.

For companies that anticipate needing an ECM system along with their DAM repository, a platform such as EMC’s offers a good path. "We can provide a unified system from day one," says David Mennie, senior product marketing manager at EMC. "Customers can have one system for the rich media, Web content management and enterprise content management, rather than silos."

In addition, EMC’s platform has some unique capabilities, adds Mennie. For example, a 3-D image solution provided by an EMC partner and incorporated into the platform can unlock computer-aided design (CAD) files in 80 different formats. That ability is helpful for creating marketing collateral, technical publications and maintenance manuals that need to include 3-D interactive models, animations or views of consumer products, as well as more complex structures such as airplane landing gear.

Rich media assets

UNICEF was founded by the United Nations in 1946 to help save, protect and improve the lives of children through immunization, education, healthcare, nutrition, clean water and sanitation. It delivers those services and material resources on a regular basis, and responds to emergencies throughout the world.

The UNICEF Web site is the primary means of conveying information about activities in which the organization is involved. With nearly 200 offices operating in 156 countries, and fundraising partner organizations in 36 industrialized countries, UNICEF has deployed a Web content management (WCM) system that allows distributed editing and publishing of content, and localization of field office Web sites.

As rich media, particularly video, became more prevalent, UNICEF also saw a need for a DAM system that could help staff members deal more effectively with the increasing number of digital assets.

"We drop professional UNICEF journalists and photographers into all sorts of places where children are affected by crisis, as well as serious ongoing challenges," says Alexander Struminger, executive project manager in UNICEF’s Internet, broadcast and image section. "Video is a good format for quickly telling complex stories and effectively feeding into news cycles, but we needed to be able to store, retrieve and distribute the files more easily."

SaaS delivery model

UNICEF had tried several approaches to DAM, including developing its own software, but usage of the systems had been limited. "One of the lessons we learned in our early attempts was that the way in which we rolled out the system was critical," says Struminger. "We knew we needed a good software product, but better software alone is never the answer. We also needed to facilitate adoption by involving stakeholders." After researching the available options and requesting proposals from best-in-class vendors, UNICEF selected the DAM platform from Widen Enterprises.

The software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model of Widen’s DAM platform removed the burden of installing and maintaining the software. UNICEF also took note of the company’s long history of high-quality service. "Widen helped us start out with a pilot project so we could introduce the product to a small group of beta testers," Struminger explains. "We made sure we had a group of motivated UNICEF stakeholders involved. This ensured early adoption and a sense of ownership by key stakeholders."

The system was introduced by UNICEF’s Geneva office at a gathering of UNICEF fundraising organizations, and several of the individuals involved in the pilot spoke enthusiastically about its merits. "This event changed the conversation," Struminger says, "and we realized it was the kind of advocacy we needed in order to get that vital adoption."

Other parts of the organization began to request the DAM system, and a global rollout is now in progress. Feedback has been very positive, and users are beginning to suggest new applications, like asset sharing between divisions, countries and partner organizations. Widen’s application for video Web streaming is also under consideration.

Users can quickly find video clips they need, along with scripts and shot lists. They can send those files directly to a journalist or news organization for review. UNICEF offices and partners can have access to up-to-date branding assets, as well as print publications files for localization, printing or electronic distribution.

"The robust search engine is really one of the keys to this system," explains Struminger, "and its ability to leverage metadata." Although the metadata and taxonomy needed to be sorted out as the system expanded, the Widen DAM system is now becoming the preferred distribution platform for digital assets.

Widen Enterprises draws its expertise from its own experience in pre-press workflow, so in addition to offering a software product it also has substantial subject matter expertise.

"Our emphasis is on service and being with customers throughout their process," says Matthew Gonnering, CEO of Widen. "For example, we staffed our own video production studio to make sure we understood the workflow. Our product handles every major video format as well." That ability provides support to social marketing efforts, allowing the distribution of video to many channels. "We don’t just get our customers set up with the software and then part company," Gonnering emphasizes. "We are available throughout the entire time of our relationship."

SaaS is growing faster in the DAM market than in other content management markets, according to IDC’s Webster. "In part, this is because the SaaS model lends itself to sharing information, which is often an important requirement for a DAM system," she says. Webster also points to the growing importance of video. "Video is definitely booming on Web sites right now," she continues. "But it needs a lot more management than WCM can offer—for example, on-demand transcoding might be needed to deliver the video in the right format for the user."

Broad KM vision

Zimmer Holdings manufactures medical products such as orthopedic implants, dental implants and artificial tissue. As a large organization with revenues of over $4 billion and 8,000 employees, Zimmer has extensive requirements for managing information of all kinds, but management of its technical information poses special challenges. All of Zimmer’s products are subject to regulation and are covered by 21 CFR Part 20, which defines how records about the products must be maintained. Changes in information relating to the medical devices need to be documented, for example, and carried into any related materials. Employees and customers also require training associated with the medical devices.

The company has developed a broad vision for a knowledge management system. Its long-term goals include migrating from a file share system for managing documents, establishing a hierarchy for regulated documents that includes inheritance of metadata for the different levels, automating the updating of rich media into regulated documents and developing an enterprise answer management system.

Goal: an answer management system

The rich media files play a role in many corporate activities, including compliance, training and marketing. "We recognized right away that we needed to have a DAM solution as part of our quality management system," says Daniel Duncan, senior instructional designer at Zimmer. The rich media might be images, technical drawings, video clips and e-learning objects. Zimmer selected TeleScope from North Plains as the best match for its requirements. "We viewed TeleScope as the best of breed," Duncan explains, "and found that its flexibility and search capability would meet or exceed what we needed."

Zimmer is now in the process of configuring the TeleScope DAM system. "We began by writing protocols to validate the software’s effectiveness in meeting the regulations," says Duncan. By the end of the year, Zimmer hopes to have corporate information available and cataloged in the system, as well as supporting information. Training materials such as tutorials will be stored as objects in the DAM system, which will interface with a learning management system (LMS) that delivers and tracks the training.

The ultimate goal is to develop an enterprise "answer management system" that allows a user to type in a question and obtain a specific answer. "This is what our users need and want," Duncan says. "Distributors might want to know about inventory management, salespeople need to know about new products, and medical practitioners might want to see a simulation of a surgical technique. We want a unified system with a strong set of metadata around the content, so we can bring all the relevant information together."

TeleScope will contain all the rich media assets and will also serve as a catalog for documents in other repositories. "Our plan is for TeleScope to serve as a bridge," explains Duncan, "by providing a consistent user interface as we migrate away from traditional document authoring and implement XML-based knowledge and content management."

Using the metadata management capability of TeleScope, Zimmer will be able to update its documents dynamically. As a digital asset that is a component in product specification is modified, for example, it will replace an older version shown in the document.

"We have a lot of documentation within our organization related to policies and procedures, training and marketing," Duncan says. "One of the most challenging tasks we have is change control and managing reusable content, the millions of complex pieces we have for all those documents." Convinced that Zimmer is on the right track in shifting to a KM paradigm, despite the long road ahead, Duncan concludes, "You have to start somewhere."

No matter where the customers start, DAM systems now allow them to go farther than ever. "We have an end-to-end capability now, says Steve Sauder, CTO of North Plains. "We can manage XML, produce printed books and distribute e-books based on a single source of content." With North Plains’ new Web 2.0 tools, publishers can support viral marketing with reviews and ratings. That scenario is a big step ahead of the static repository that characterized earlier generation DAM systems.

Link to original article: http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/DAM-takes-on-many-roles-56214.aspx

Why do I need permissions and roles in DAM?

2009-09-28T02:09:00.000-07:00

By Henrik de Gryor on Another DAM blog (about Digital Asset Management)
Link to original post : http://anotherdamblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/28/why-do-i-need-permissions-and-roles-in-dam/
September 28th, 2009

Any Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution worth implementing across an organization should have the following:

The ability to assign permissions or access to various tasks in the DAM. This includes permission to:
- access assets and/or collections in the DAM
- preview assets in the DAM
- add/append/edit metadata to the assets in the DAM
- upload assets to the DAM
- download assets with transformations from the DAM
- order assets (such as licensed assets in the DAM)
- delete assets in the DAM
- version assets in the DAM
- report on assets in the DAM
- do specific tasks with these assets from the DAM

The ability to assign roles or groups of people who share the same permissions to do things in the DAM. At the very least, there should be at least a few roles available to assign any user of the DAM:
- Administrator role often has full control of the DAM and is empowered with full permissions to do anything necessary including configurations.
- Regular user role usually has limited permissions to do specific things such as preview assets and maybe download assets directly from the DAM.
- If you wanted to expand to a third role, there is often a power user role. Typically, power users can do more than the average user, but less than the administrator. Often, a power user can upload assets to the DAM.

Depending on who in your organization is supposed to access what collections of assets and be able to do specific tasks with these assets, you may want to create a role which meets each criteria. Why use roles/groups rather than grant each individual user specific permissions one at a time? Well, how many DAM users do you have? Roles are a simple way to bunch groups of users together who need the same permissions. This way, permissions are granted in a uniform manner to users who fall in a specific user role. This can speed up the process of adding a new user or editing their permissions, instead of visiting each collection and permission for each individual user throughout the DAM.

You could have user roles which can preview (read-only) specific collections of assets, but not other collections.
You may have roles which can preview, edit, upload and download assets but not delete assets (such as your power user role).
You may want a role which can preview and download from only one collection of assets relative to their job function because they often need to use or refer to just these assets.

I would not recommend allowing all users to have all permissions to do everything in the DAM (aka free for all) because that often leads to a lot of inconsistencies, accidents and chaos, particularly deletion.You probably had that before you had a DAM. So, why go back to those times? Do you miss the chaos and headaches for some reason? The idea here is to empower users within each user role to be able to access/do/see what they need in the DAM for their job function. Unless assets are restricted for specific uses or for specific eyes only, there is little reason to limit the access to previewing assets in the DAM, but it is up to the administrator and their management to decide what level of access should be granted to whom. If a user needs to access/do/see more (and is permitted to), permissions and roles can be changed by an administrator to allow more access and usability to users of the DAM.

How do you use permissions and roles within your organization’s DAM?

Canto Cumulus 8.0.2 released

2009-09-21T05:41:00.000-07:00

By Chelsi Nakano | Sep 16, 2009
Link to original article: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/enterprise-cms/canto-cumulus-802-digital-asset-management-for-all-005543.php

Canto, a digital asset management solutions provider that operates out of both San Francisco and Berlin, released the second scheduled update to their Cumulus 8 product line as promised. Canto Cumulus is a cross-platform that enables users to organize and track their digital files. Arguably the coolest part of Canto 8.0.2, the newest version, is its compatibility with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the forthcoming Microsoft Windows 7.

Canto! Canto!

Though you might not have heard of them, Canto has been in the digital assets game since 1990. Canto Cumulus, their main attraction, has been around since last May and enables companies to organize, find, share and track their digital files no matter the format. And, as with any good platform, Canto’s network offers a grab-bag of plugins and other enhancements for those of you that need more than the stock edition.

With a reported 100 fixes and improvements offered in the new version, including compatibility with two very popular operating systems, Cumulus 8.0.2 might be just what you’re looking for. Other cool new functionality includes:

Scheduler/Catalog via email
Automatic report generation
Automized copy/move/delete
Cumulus image editor
Built-in watermarking and noise asset protections
Enhanced file format support for HTML and RTF
New field type "table" for metadata

Canto also offers a handy demo video here.

“Cumulus 8.0.2 was the perfect time for us to add support for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 in a single update,” says Canto CTO Thomas Schleu. “And now that Cumulus 8 has been tuned twice since its initial release, we can turn our main development focus to taking advantage of all the new capabilities the new architecture makes possible.”

Cloudy Days

Updates are free and available all customers on active service agreements. Otherwise, if you’re new the whole Canto game, you can fill out a simple form and try it for free before you hand over your precious cash.

Statistics that have DAM Meaning

2009-09-21T05:10:00.000-07:00

By Matthew Gonnerin, Broadcast Newsroom, Sep 14, 2009
Link to original article: http://software.broadcastnewsroom.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=843071&afterinter=true

While each customer will use DAM and judge its overall effectiveness differently, threads exist which can be measured

We probably have baseball and The Sporting News to thank for the proliferation of statistics in all sports. Yet, Mark Twain once said there are lies, damned lies and statistics. Of course, he was speaking about to the persuasive power of numbers and about how people will either promote or ignore statistics based entirely on whether or not they support a position. This "truth" is the reason many baseball arguments have never been settled. L

et me tell you something. Statistics are not going away. An entire industry of sports fantasy leagues is now flourishing because somebody found a way to get people to "compete" using statistics. It is human nature. You compare your stats to everyone else's to find out where you stand. Marketers and creative folks are no different. They want to know how they compare to others, including their use of digital asset management (DAM). We are well down the path of being able to begin providing this kind of information and have it be meaningful.

As a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider, we are in the unique position of having access to an aggregation of all of our customer's data. We know we have more than 50,000 users from 120 different countries. We see the amount of downloads taking place for digital content. We see what content is being used and repurposed. We see how much data is being consumed. We are literally sitting on a goldmine of data. It should be no surprise that marketing or brand managers would be interested in knowing what that data says. It behooves us to be constantly looking at it and to create ways to show our clients what they and others are doing while maintaining customer privacy within our strict security.

The majority of organizations invest in digital asset management solutions to improve interaction with their branded materials to maximize the investments made in the creation of images, videos, audio, creative files and other marketing materials. While each customer will use DAM and judge its overall effectiveness differently, enough common threads exist which can be standardized and measured in ratios, similar to financial statements.

We picked the following four ratios that we feel are most important to digital asset management.

Digital asset activity ratio
Repurposing ratio
User activity ratio
Digital asset consumption ratio

Digital Asset Activity Ratio: A comparison between the quantity of files that have been ordered and the amount of files stored in the application. This ratio provides insight into the relationship between download activity and all the digital assets stored in the application. For example, a low number for this ratio could mean that a marketing department may need to look at assets with high activity, compared to low activity. For instance, lifestyle images may have higher activity than static product shots. If so, marketing can shift their spending on creating assets.

Repurposing Ratio: A comparison between the active digital assets and the quantity of files ordered. This provides insight into the amount of content repurposing that is taking place over a period of time. Repurposing continues to be a key component of digital asset management value. A high number indicates that the same digital assets are being ordered by various users over a specific time period. A low number may point to a small set of users rarely ordering the same files over a given time period. Either way, this ratio speaks to activity that may call for an adjustment on spending priorities. A change in the number over time also gives you instant feedback whether adjustments you make are working.

User Activity Ratio: A comparison between the total number of logins and the quantity of users that have logged in provides information about visitation frequency. This metric also provides insight into how frequently users visit to browse or check back on new branded materials. These ratios provide confirmation of whether DAM is working in the specific areas of relieving a resources drain by internal staff and increasing brand reach. If the number is low, action should be taken to promote the system's use internally. It may involve a decision to include more training, focus on other types of digital assets, or change the way a client's users are interacting with the system.

Digital Asset Consumption Ratio: Comparing the quantity of files ordered to the users that logged into the system provides information on the amount of data being consumed by each user over a specific time period.

This ratio speaks to the original reason for DAM implementation. As mentioned earlier, the reasons vary from company to company. If a company wants to use DAM as a mass distribution tool, they will want to watch this ratio to make sure it is being used properly. If the numbers are low, the DAM application is being treated more as an archive than a "heavy use" application and could be addressed with more internal promotion of DAM.

Additional interpretations of all of these DAM ratios will continue to be developed. But right now, the numbers can be compared (vs. the average & medians) against historical activity within the same system or against historical activity across the entire customer base of the SaaS provider or even against the use of DAM by the provider itself. A SaaS provider should easily be able to supply its natural expertise on how to read and what to do with these ratios. For example, a user may be interacting with the system five times a month and in that month, he or she downloaded approximately ten files and of those ten files, half are being repurposed a hundred times. There is significant value in knowing this and what it means.

Regularly sharing and discussing information like this, in and of itself, should be a SaaS best practice. The ability to do so is a wonderful example of the most important "S" in SaaS : the service "S". It is a major distinction between SaaS and installed DAM software. Installed providers don't have the same kind of control over as much data because systems are deployed at individual sites. An installed provider doesn't automatically set things up to retrieve all of this data from their deployment sites and pull it back in so it can be analyzed. Why? Because doing so can be a pretty significant and costly project. It is a lot of rigmarole that, in many cases gets skipped. Not so with SaaS.

Matthew Gonnering is CEO of Widen Enterprises, a Madison,WI-based SaaS provider of digital asset management technologies.

DAM vendors vs. marketing agencies -- understanding the difference

2009-09-15T05:57:00.000-07:00

By Theresa Regli, Analyst, CMS Watch, 14-Sep-2009
Link to original article: http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1685-DAM-Vendors-Marketing-Agencies

I'm currently advising two Fortune Global 1000 companies on a vendor short list for their upcoming digital asset management procurement. Both of these companies are focused on centralizing their brand assets, streamlining the cost to create multi-lingual print advertising and catalogs, and addressing light needs around managing video and audio.

Both of these clients heard me speak about the DAM vendor marketplace at recent conferences in New York and London, and once I started working with them in an advisory capacity, the first question both asked was, "Some of the vendors on our list aren't in your research, or you didn't talk about them in your presentation. Why?"

The short lists these companies initially put together included both DAM vendors as well as digital marketing agencies. The former, as we point out in out Digital & Media Asset Management research, are primarily in the business of selling software. They make the majority of their revenues from software licenses and hone products over many years to accommodate common scenarios. Digital marketing agencies, on the other hand, are primarily in the business of providing marketing services. They sell services to create brands, build ad campaigns, manage brand relaunches, and many other marketing needs. Occasionally, they also build custom tools to help their clients manage brand assets. Sometimes they host a common platform for all their clients (often based on the technology of one of the vendors we evaluate), and customize for their various clients as needed.

Digital marketing agencies are often entrenched in organizations for years, and may have a loyal internal client advocate selling them into other parts of any large global company. With one of my current clients, this was the case - one person was vehemently upset that the team wouldn't keep his favorite digital marketing agency on the short list for a DAM procurement, even though they didn't even sell a DAM product.

Understanding a vendor's core competency should be your first step before considering them for any short list. Coupling this understanding with a clear picture of your own needs will allow you to have the right combination to pinpoint vendors. If your needs are very simple brand asset centralization, perhaps your favorite digital marketing agency might be appropriate to host a central repository for you. But for large global organizations -- with dozens of agencies in multiple locations, enterprise integration requirements, and generating varied, multi-lingual and multi-channel output -- you need a serious piece of enterprise software.

Your preferred marketing agency likely has experience with many vendor tools, or might specialize in a few. But you should be sure to pick the tool that fits your scenarios best, and not take shortcuts by simply going with the one your favorite art director has experience with (or the one his company sells). Digital marketing agencies are a very important piece of successful brand management, but be sure to put them into the part of the puzzle where they really and truly fit.

Canto Cumulus 8.0.2 Released

2009-09-15T05:36:00.000-07:00

BERLIN, 10 SEP 2009 — Canto® today announced the release of Canto Cumulus 8.0.2, the second scheduled update to the Cumulus 8 product line, released last May.

Among almost 100 fixes and improvements offered by the update are compatibility with Microsoft Windows 7, due in October, and Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), released in August.

“Cumulus 8.0.2 was the perfect time for us to add support for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 in a single update,” says Canto CTO Thomas Schleu. “And now that Cumulus 8 has been tuned twice since its initial release, we can turn our main development focus to taking advantage of all the new capabilities the new architecture makes possible.”

Canto recommends the Cumulus 8.0.2 update to all customers.

Updates are available free of charge to all customers on active service agreements. Customers whose service agreements have expired should contact their Canto representative for upgrade information.

Find out more about Canto Cumulus 8.0.2: http://www.canto.com

Extensis Suitcase Fusion™2 Adds Apple® Snow Leopard Compatibility

2009-09-15T05:29:00.000-07:00

PORTLAND, Oregon, September 9, 2009 – Extensis, a division of Celartem Inc., today released Suitcase Fusion™ 2 version 13.2, adding support for Mac OS X Snow Leopard to its single-user professional font management product.

This product update will also include:

Adobe InDesign and Illustrator CS2 plug-ins powered by Font Sense™technology
Support for TrueType Collection fonts, including the updated Snow Leopard system fonts

Current Suitcase Fusion 2 users on Mac OS X Leopard v 10.5 or higher will receive this maintenance update at no cost. All current users of Suitcase Fusion 1 are eligible for upgrade pricing. English, French, and German versions of Suitcase Fusion 2 version 13.2 are now available for download from the Extensis website at www.extensis.com/SuitcaseFusion2.

About Extensis

Extensis is a software developer that allows creative workgroups and professionals to streamline their workflow and securely manage their digital assets and fonts. Extensis’ award-winning client/server and desktop products include Universal Type Server forserver-based font management, Suitcase for single-user font management and the Portfolio suite for digital asset management. Extensis was founded in 1993 and is based in Portland, Oregon, and the United Kingdom. Extensis is a division of Celartem Inc., which is wholly owned by Celartem Technology Inc., (Hercules: 4330). For additional information, visit www.extensis.com or call 1-800-796-9798.

About Celartem

Celartem Technology Inc. develops and sells innovative technologies for storage, access and distribution of rich media content. Celartem is listed on the Osaka Securities Exchange, Hercules:4330. Established in 1996, Celartem is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and has a wholly owned subsidiary, Celartem Inc. with headquarters in Seattle.

Extensis, Suitcase Fusion, Universal Type Server and Portfolio are trademarks of Extensis, a division of Celartem, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

The FeedRoom Introduces Enterprise Communications Solution Featuring Live and On-Demand Web Video

2009-09-04T07:54:00.000-07:00

Affordable Single-Platform Solution Offers Contemporary, Cost-Efficient Approach to Delivering Global Enterprise Communications

NEW YORK, NY (September 2, 2009) - The FeedRoom, a pioneer in online video communications, and a market leader in live streaming video and digital asset management, today announced a new subscription-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) package designed to address the enterprise communications needs of globally dispersed organizations. The affordable offering combines the easy-to-use publishing, distribution and measurement capabilities of FeedRoom Studio with integrated live and on-demand Web video formats for more effective and cost-efficient employee, customer and partner communications in contextual, enterprise video “channels.”

Using Web video in corporate communications enables organizations to “do more with less” by eliminating the considerable limitations of traditional conferencing, satellite, email and event-based delivery methods. Today streaming video is being used to support a variety of internal communications, such as live town hall meetings and corporate TV “channels” that provide a knowledge base of news and information to global employees. External applications include executive presentations, live and recorded corporate events, and programs for sales and customer training and enablement. In all cases, Web video reduces travel costs and provides audiences with searchable, shareable video - available on-demand, across time zones and in multiple languages.

“Capitalizing on rapidly declining video production costs and the explosion of user-generated content, companies such as Bausch & Lomb, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and others are seeing the added benefits of delivering information to employees, customers and partners in the same way they already consume it on the Internet, which is largely through Web video,” said Mark Portu, President and CEO of The FeedRoom. “High-quality video, whether it’s live or on-demand, is an effective way for business leaders to connect with global audiences; it’s measurable and allows viewers to fully engage in the experience by having the opportunity to watch, listen, rate and refer video to others.”

The new Enterprise Communication Channel Package is based on the extensive capabilities of the FeedRoom 4.0 Enterprise Video Platform, a scalable enterprise solution that integrates with content management systems, social and mobile media distribution tools, and popular Web analytics packages. The solution offers a variety of lightweight, user-customizable video players and the powerful FeedRoom Studio publishing application. Unlike consumer video-sharing sites, FeedRoom 4.0 ensures positive online brand experiences by providing maximum control over the distribution and measurement of video content.

Available immediately, the comprehensive Enterprise Communications Channel package provides capabilities for:

Built-in video upload, transcode and podcast extraction;
Optional Really Simple Upload (RSU) interface for publishing video created across the enterprise;
Support for high-quality, on-demand and live streaming video, including the ability to record live events for later viewing;
Highly customizable user experiences, featuring a range of player templates;
Player embed capabilities to share and distribute video content to other sites and blogs;
Configurable, password-protected podcast, Web and high-quality video downloads;
Enterprise security module for limiting access to authenticated intranet and/or extranet users only;
Syndication support via XML and RSS feeds to alert audiences that new content is available; and
Full-service reporting to know what was watched and for how long.

FeedRoom 4.0 is flexible and upgradable to support all types of internal or external communications - or both - in a single-platform solution. Delivered in a SaaS model, the benefits of FeedRoom 4.0 for Fortune 1000 enterprises and government agencies include faster time to deployment, no additional infrastructure costs, reduced dependence on internal IT services for communications support, and access to The FeedRoom’s latest software releases and on-staff video experts. For an online demo of FeedRoom 4.0 Enterprise Video Platform, visit www.feedroom.com/page/request_evp_4.0_demo.

Henry Stewart Business Briefing on DAM - Chicago, October 29th 2009

2009-09-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

Managing Digital Assets is increasingly a core management discipline for both commercial companies and not for profit organisations alike. Henry Stewart Events is the leading provider of briefings for DAM managers worldwide - satisfying the need to know what is possible, how to achieve it and how to avoid the mistakes others have made. It covers the fundamentals, the new opportunities and the latest thinking on best practice – all from the user’s perspective. Clear, comprehensive, detailed briefings and case studies on “how to ….” and, “how we …” covering:

Key Trends in DAM Today
Metadata, Taxonomy and Search
DAM Services Groups: the essential roles, accountabilities, and skills of a DAM Operation
Rights management and enforcement
Building a Business Case for DAM
Developments in technology
Internal training
DAM in Marketing Operations Management
Setting expectations for next generation DAM
Real world case studies from Tribune Company, Motorola, Northwestern University, Wunderman and Willow Creek Community Church.

Who should Attend?

For everyone involved or likely to become involved in the management of digital assets in:
Airlines • Accountancy and Audit • Advertising and Marketing • Automotive manufacturing • Broadcasting • Construction, Architecture, Engineering and Real Estate • Defense • Education • Energy Supply • Financial & Insurance Services • Film • Food and Beverage • Gaming • Government and the Public Sector • IT • Legal Services • Leisure and Sport • Libraries, Museums, Galleries & Archives • Manufacturing in all its forms • Maritime trade • Media & Entertainment • Medical, Healthcare • Music • Pharmaceutical Development and Manufacturing • Publishing & Printing • Rail • Retail • Television • Telecoms • Transport • Utilities

Full documentation will be provided to all delegates and adequate time set aside for questions and discussion.

The Problem Panel

Submit your problem in writing prior to the briefing or on the day and have the expert panel members address it. Confidentiality fully respected if requested by you.

Link to Henry Stewart website for registration and information on optional tutorials pre- and post-event:

http://www.damusers.com/events/about.php?eventid=31&showme

Keywording Lemons - How To Avoid an Inflexible In-house Keywording System

2009-08-31T05:07:00.000-07:00

Versatility is the key to a good in-house keywording system, so try not to get hooked into software that limits your options.

Keywording is one of the most important determinants of image sales, yet in software packages designed to run image web sites or provide back end support for photo libraries keywording is often a very basic add-on. Worse, they can be extremely complicated affairs which are difficult and time-consuming to use.

If you ever want to change your keywording system to improve or change the type of keywords you have, or to try outsourcing, you may find yourself unable to do so without spending large amounts of money.

And if you ever decide to change to different web site or back end software, you may find your keywording cannot be transferred to the new system except at great cost.

Many such systems have been designed with little thought as to the cost of entering keywords, the standards of vocabularies and so on. After all, the people writing the software often aren't keyworders and may well have little experience of this unusual science.

Sometimes the keywording interfaces have been designed assuming that the people adding the keywords will be untrained and so limits need to be placed on how words are entered in order to achieve consistency. That has superficial appeal, but in our experience may limit the poor keywording only marginally. More importantly it may limit the ability for professional keyworders to do their job should they be employed in the future.

To help you evaluate the keywording aspects of image management software we've come up with this checklist. If you don't know the answers to these questions, you'll need to find out from your service provider :

1. Where are your keywords stored, and how easy are they to move?

If the keywords are held within IPTC fields of each image, or a database that can easily be exported to a spreadsheet then you are in the best position to move elsewhere or change procedures. If you are locked into using only the database of the service provider, or to export the keywords is costly, then you have a major problem in the making.

2. Does the keywording interface include a lot of check-boxes and drop-down menus to select keywords?

Check-boxes and drop-down menus in themselves aren't a problem, except that if not designed properly they will slow down keywording enormously. We once saw some software written for a client which had hundreds of check-boxes to choose from. It took forever scanning these to make a selection - mindbending and slow. Likewise, drop-down menus of single words are very slow to use. These devices also tend to make if hard to change vocabularies or word selections without lengthy updating of databases, interfaces or the software itself.

3. Can you drop keywords into a single keywording window?

Even if check-boxes and drop-down menus are used, having this feature will give some versatility. It allows different (ie more efficient) systems for generating keywords to be used independently of the software, with the resulting keywords pasted into the field.

4. Do you have to keyword one image at a time?

It seems like the obvious way to keyword images, but it's also the slowest way to work with images. Doing a number of images at once is far faster and tends also to be more consistent and accurate.

5. How easy is it to change keywords already written?

We are often asked to fix up poor keywording, and clients can be frustrated to find out that there is no easy way to do it without ponderously re-keywording using the software they already have. The ideal situation is that the images can be sent for revising with the keywords in IPTC. These can then be amended and resubmitted into the database with the resulting changes overwriting what's already there. Overwriting by re-keywording into a spreadsheet which is imported back into the database is also excellent. Too often, clients are told this cannot be done at all, or only with major, costly, rewriting of the software. Make sure easy overwriting is standard and you'll avoid headaches.

6. How is your keywording vocabulary organised?

To maintain consistency you should be using a vocabulary to assist in selection of keywords. At some time in the future you are likely to want to change that vocabulary, integrate it with a better one from a third party, or replace it altogether. How easy is it to do that? If the vocabulary can be exported and re-imported as a text document or spreadsheet this should be relatively easy. If the vocabulary is held in a series of fields inside the service provider's database and can't be easily exported, you are looking at a lot of time and money to rectify the problem.

7. Are you able to add or amend keywords any other way than by using the service provider's software?

This is the bottom line when assessing this sort of software for keywording purposes. If the answer to the question is "no", then outsourcing, major vocabulary upgrades, or moving to a better service provider are going to be painful if not downright impossible. Even if the answer is "yes", you may still be up for the cost of messy workarounds. And if the method of adding keywords with the existing software is slow, you will keep on paying the price for that slowness with each new image.

By Kevin Townsend, KEEDUP
Link to original article: http://keywordingcentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/keywording-lemonshow-to.html

What is stopping you from investing in a DAM solution?

2009-08-27T02:21:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I posted a poll to gauge the main reasons why some organizations have not invested in a DAM yet. Aside from the needed awareness about what is a DAM and why would an organization even need a DAM which I explain on this blog, I listed a few common answers (aka excuses) based on what I have hear from several other organizations who either had issues implementing a DAM or still have issues implementing a DAM to date.

“That involves work, so we’ll continue doing things the same way we’ve been doing it since 1989.”

Charles Darwin said, “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment. The modern translation in business would be ‘Adapt to the 21st century methods of doing business or watch your business swirl around the bowl’. Yes, implementing and continually using a DAM will take some work and consistency, possibly more consistency than your organization had beforehand. Consistency is a good thing and will give you more time for creative projects and evolving into 21st century methods of doing business. And you will also need to upgrade that 20 year old technology so it can work for you rather than you working for it.

“We don’t reuse anything…ever“

If you really don’t reuse anything, you probably have a very special business that wastes a lot of time, money and other resources. Once you truly realize what your organization can reuse, you should be able to make more money (eventually), but you can not make more time…ever. I am not saying you need to be as ‘green’ as grass, but you should start thinking out of side of that small mind set which typically ends at your desktop and watch what your organization re-creates and/or re-acquires constantly. That is what you can save, make available, reuse and track with a DAM. That can help save your organization some green (aka dollars).

If an organization can’t find assets again, they may not know anything about their own assets either. With a DAM that has proper metadata, you now can know about what you have at hand and possibly the licenses for these assets. Get more out of your organization’s intellectual property more often than simply the first time it was created or acquired.

“We don’t have the staffing because we are too busy looking for things we can’t find“

You can watch institutional knowledge walk out the door with the knowledge of where and how to find things:

- buried in some pile with a magically filing system only one person knows about
- within a folder structure 50 levels deep
- on their desktop (the ultimate silo)

People with institutional knowledge walk out your doors voluntarily or (even more frequently nowadays) involuntarily. What are you doing to preserve the institutional knowledge and the intellectual property of your organization when people move on? Where is it kept since day one? Hint: Using a DAM is a start.

“We have too many people asking for this thing, so we’ll do nothing about it“

You can continue procrastinating. It’s only your business. Do you need know what you have and what you don’t? Does the rest of your organization know this too? Does everyone know where to find what they need at that moments’ notice?

“We can’t spend on anything, including tools that will save time and money“

It is your business and your money. Are you running low on matches yet? Or do you audit your procedures when dealing with digital assets? You have standard workflows to handle it all, right? Everyone knows where to look to find what they need? It’s all documented for continuity, right?

“It is too expensive and we prefer burning money on duplicate production time“

Are you loosing employees in this economic climate? As employees leave your organization for any reason, they leave with that institutional knowledge with them. It should not take a large group of people lots of time to find or create assets, particularly assets your organization already has. How do you capture the assets (i.e. audio, graphics, presentations, photographs, text, video) they have created or acquired for your organization? Are you going to:

Wait til their hard drive is purged after they leave the organization?
Print out all emails and read them?
Burn a CD only to lose it in a few days or get it scratched?
Video tape them babbling about way back when…

No. Save your organization’s assets, time and money. Get a DAM solution for your organization’s business needs for now and the future. How much time will your organization waste recreating or reacquiring the same thing again? DAM helps put an end to that and bring more consistency using workflows for assets.

How many times do you use your organization’s logo? DAM could report on that and make sure it look right each and every time…unless you like brand inconsistency. Also, there are more deals to be made in such an economic climate, so it is worth looking into.

“We don’t believe it can help us because we don’t have any digital assets
“We don’t need to manage digital assets…yet“

This is only possible today if:

your organization still operates without computers OR
the organization is in denial (I am not referring to the long river in Egypt)

The longer it takes an organization to realize they are accumulating digital assets in silos and not managing them properly, the harder it will be to manage those legacy digital assets in the future.

“[DAM] involves workflow and we don’t have those“

Start with whatever procedures you do have when it comes to dealing with digital assets from start to finish. Who does what when and how is it done? Document this in writing. Consolidate the procedures. Streamline where possible and standardize it. What is missing?

People?
Process?
Technology?
All of the above?

Get feedback and fill in the gaps. You’ll see for yourself what you need. Then, communicate this to stakeholders with clear solutions.

If an organization doesn’t have standardized workflows, not only does that make it harder to train anyone new within the organization, but reveals that there is probably very little consistency and lots of waste. It may be time to create and to document the workflows within the organization. It is not a matter of job security (keep dreaming if you believe that actually exists in the 21st century). It is a matter of having procedures that makes business sense.

“We are organized enough and we have no room for improvement nor streamlining”

Reached perfection already? Come on! Get your head out of the clouds or wherever else it may be buried. Every organization has room for improvement. As soon as you stop improving your organization, expect to stop growing soon and continue throwing money out the window. Implementing a DAM solution properly can be one of those improvements, if done right.

“We prefer sending hard copies of all assets and paying for postage to mail all of it slowly around the globe“

That does not need to happen any longer unless you like wasting time waiting. You can send a soft copy (aka electronic copy) of anything around the globe in seconds by email, by FTP, by URL to a download link or multiple other methods, even if it needs to color proofed, printed, signed or whatever. Stop everyone’s wasting time. DAM can be connected to many methods of communication in order to transfer digital assets inside or outside your organization as needed.

“We can’t convince the stakeholders in my organization because it involves technology they don’t understand“

Document the cases in writing of what happens in your organization today:

What happens when it comes to dealing with digital assets from start to finish?
Can everyone access what they should access when they need it?
Can they find what they are looking for when they do have access?
Do you know what licenses are for those assets?
Can you easily reuse assets when needed quickly?
How much is spent when everyone can not do this effeciently and effectively?
How often does this happen?
Where are the gaps in the process?
What could fill in those gaps aside from spending unlimited time?
Who will lead the effort toward resolving the issues if you get the backing of the stakeholders?
Be prepared to submit a budget and time estimates so do your homework and research it.
Ask stakeholders them what they need clarification on.

Unless stakeholders are asleep at the wheel of a sinking ship, they may eventually show interest in backing a plan to resolve these issues, particularly nowadays if the ROI can be justified.

“We are not organized enough to start a project like that because we are beyond help“

Get some help from outside your organization. It may be time to start getting organized because it is not going to get any easier if you wait longer.

“Our IT department does not want to support yet another application“

If you have an IT department, get them involved from the beginning of the process of picking the right DAM solution for your organization. Not all DAM solutions require extensive IT work within an organization.

“We find metadata scary so we’ll just stick to folder structures to help us lose our assets“

You didn’t really need to know what you actually have nor where to find it without a map, right? That awesome file naming convention tells you everything about those assets you’d ever need and helps you find the asset too, right? Wake up. Find out why you need metadata how to apply metadata to assets. Your organization should uniformly decide what metadata standard(s) you need to use and follow consistently. and

“...Hold on, I am still thinking of some more excuses“

Do you see that bond fire? Your organization is throwing money into it. As soon as the organization decides they want to join the 21st century because carving stone tablets is no longer profitable within most businesses, they might start looking for a DAM solution.

“We are still thinking about it and will continue to think about it for years as we accumulate more assets”

Again, it is not going to get easier if you decide to wait longer. You will continue accumulating more digital assets every year. You can continue being unable to find assets, loosing assets and burn money re-acquiring or re-creating them repeatedly. Your organization needs to make the conscious decision when they had enough of this and decide what solution they have to this issue. Stop accumulating digital assets is not one of those options anymore unless you like throwing more money away repeatedly.

“What is Digital Asset Management again?“

You probably have not read this blog very long nor the ones in my blogroll on the right if you are still wondering what is a DAM. Start reading and learn how DAM can help you and your organization.

Now that you have a few less excuses to use, don’t take it personally, but rather do something about it. What is stopping your organization from investing in a DAM solution?

By Henrik de Gyor on August 26, 2009, Another DAM bLog
Link to original article: http://anotherdamblog.wordpress.com/

Cost of storage for ECM & DAM: Part 2

2009-08-27T02:00:00.000-07:00

I recently posted a piece regarding storage costs for ECM that seemed to garner some interest, so I thought I might just flesh out some of the assumptions I made in that a little further. The basic premise was that people who buy ECM and DAM systems tend to underestimate the cost of related storage, and typically do so by a wide margin. In addition to underestimating the costs, buyers typically underestimate the volume of storage required. Combined, these miscalculations can, and often do, prove to be very costly.

In my experience these miscalculations are generally due to either a misguided assumption that storage volumes and costs are falling to the point whereby they are not worth worrying about, or that the buyer has previous experience with a web content management system, and assumes that as storage was a minor issue then, so it will be a minor issue with a full blown DAM or ECM implementations. The reality is, nothing could be further from the truth.

First, some basics. Although the cost of 1GB of storage has plummeted over the years, the cost of managing the stored data has not. In fact enterprise storage costs have continued to rise year on year. It is easy, though wrong, to equate the cost of disk space with the overall cost of storage. Disk costs represent a very small part of the overall storage bill. Managing the structure, security and access to and from that stored data is what costs a lot more.

Even as disk space costs have plummeted, our appetite for filling those disks has grown at an even greater rate. ECM and DAM storage costs have risen more than most as they both manage bulky content files. The increased use of rich media, PowerPoint, Flash files, video, audio or even just the use of graphics in typical office documents has bulked up storage demands way beyond anything one could have predicted just a few years ago, lifting many multi-terabyte situations to the petabytes today.

As the sheer volume of content being stored has grown exponentially, so too has the realization that hidden amongst these volumes are actual items of real business value, and/or items that could get us into trouble if lost (or found). The need to address such related issues as backup for basic protection, disaster recovery to ensure that we can survive if everything gets hit in a single location, and of course archiving, ensures that we can separate and actively manage important content over the long term. Enterprises must do this to meet compliance and legal needs. All of these of course add considerably to costs, though they do enable content owners to sleep well at night.

Some buyers just want to push it all to "The Cloud" and if that works for them, great - but that is not necessarily a low-cost option. As a rough guide, 1 petabyte of storage will cost you around $150k per month using Amazon S3, yes, that's $1,800,000 per year. Of course one can argue that "The Cloud" does all the DR and Backup work for you so there could be cost savings there, but its still not exactly cheap. Yes I know not everyone will need a petabyte of storage, but my point remains valid, as you will likely need far more storage space than you think you do. Whether you end up with a fiber channel SAN courtesy of NetApp, Hitachi or EMC or you opt for the Cloud - you are going to pay out a lot of money.

But hold on a second: surely this all assumes that such costs are inevitable and indeed necessary, that the only error is the fact that you, the buyer, underestimated them? In fact the major error here is that most buyers of ECM and DAM systems are not thinking about using storage systems in the way they were designed to be used. Theoretically at least such systems allow you to clear out junk (irrelevant, duplicated or redundant) on an ongoing basis, and only manage key data or files. This behavior is sorely lacking from our content management routines. Moreover, better systems integrate well with most common storage options, providing fairly seamless retention and disposition management, in some cases even going so far as to help in the automation of tiered storage. But few buyers ever make any use of these features and they become little more than electronic buckets, buckets that get filled in random order.

So, what is the lesson here? Well maybe there is more than one lesson, for starters:

You should always ensure that accurate storage calculations are an early and important of any ECM or DAM project
Put proper content governance in place to ensure you're not paying for space you don't need (Consider that a business case for ECM and DAM can often be made simply based on the savings derived from an efficient retention and disposal process)
Finally, the next time you hear somebody say that enterprise storage is getting cheaper and cheaper, hit them, they deserve it.

By: Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analys, CMS Watch, 24-Aug-2009
Link to original article: http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1671-Storage-for-ECM-DAM-Part-2?source=RSS

Storage costs for ECM and DAM Systems

2009-08-27T01:58:00.000-07:00

We have had an interesting internal discussion at CMS Watch the past few days, surrounding the cost of storage for content technology systems. It is a discussion that too few buyers have before embarking on costly ECM or DAM projects. Enterprises often assume that storage, just like networking, is simply a corporate IT overhead -- and maybe in your organization it is -- but that doesn't mean it's free.

So how much does storage cost? Well, it's like the answer to the question, how long is a piece of string....."it depends." But a better answer may be "more than you might think." In many cases much more, and quite often more than the cost of the application software and associated services will cost you.

The variables here revolve around the type of content you manage. If it's mostly html files, then the volume will not likely be too high. If on the other hand, it is typically Office files, or worse still Rich Media (such as video files) then your storage needs will shoot up. These days Terabytes of data are the norm; typical ECM installations have 25-50TB of content, and some run into the multiple Petabytes. And these numbers are only likely to grow as rich media and ever richer documents become the norm.

Another factor that can seriously impact your storage costs surrounds the issue of lifecycle management, and version control. If redundant files are moved off the live system to an active archive as and when they become redundant -- and in turn are destroyed when they reach the end of their lifecycle -- your storage costs will become more manageable.

If on the other hand, you just keep everything, the costs will skyrocket. In previous consulting engagements for large enterprises I have found less than 4% of the content sitting in file servers to be relevant: the vast majority of the content is out of date, duplicated, or not even business related (porn, recipes family photo albums, and the like). Good content housekeeping is just common sense.

So how much does storage cost? Well depending on your media of choice, 25TB will cost you anywhere from just under a $100k per year for a hosted service to $350k if you were to buy, install and manage the hardware in-house. If you get into the Petabyte category then you are in the millions to start the discussion.

You of course need to look at all the storage options, and understand that storage costs are not just as simple as calculating disk space. There are trade offs in terms of access, performance, and price between Direct Attached, SAN, and NAS options. You will likely end up with a mixed environment. Just as you also need to consider the cost and need for Disaster Recovery, Back-Up, and Archiving in addition to your primary requirements.

Likewise you will need to consider the physical distance between consumers and stored data. Don't let anyone kid you -- a file accessed in Tokyo sitting in a file server in New York will take longer to render than one sitting in Kyoto...

And yes, just in case you are thinking about it: to back up one Petabyte, you will need another Petabyte at least....soon adds up doesn't it?

There is a myth that storage is cheap; it's not cheap. Just because you see 1GB flash drives going for a song at your local store, does not mean that enterprise storage costs have plummeted. They haven't. Moreover, they are not going to, since our needs remain insatiable and are only set to grow. So next time you are considering investing in a system like SharePoint, FileNet, Artesia, or MediaBin, make sure you think through your storage needs carefully, and cost them realistically from the outset.

By: Alan Pelz-Sharpe, Analyst, CMS Watch
Link to original article: http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1662-ECM-DAM-Storage

Tunicca Announces Clever Cost Savings Package

2009-08-27T01:31:00.000-07:00

PRLog (Press Release) – Aug 10, 2009 – Tunicca, the Business Process Analysis company has announced a new initiative – a constructive and manageable package to help companies in the present economic downturn. Tunicca whose core expertise is pre-media business analysis and improvement is offering an initial inexpensive package of consultancy and purchasing strategy for pre-media enterprises to help businesses streamline production and maximise profit margins. The package is tailored for all types of pre-media operations involved in the complex management of digital files.

Tunicca’s Sean Runchman explains, “Across a wide range of sectors such as Printing, Packaging, Publishing and Entertainment Media, businesses are facing financial challenges like never before. We are offering a low cost package to meet demand and assist pre-media companies in the current financial downturn.” “There is increased pressure to look internally for operational savings,” continues Runchman. “This is where Tunicca can assist. We are able to analyse a company’s production and supply chain model and identify and assess the bottlenecks. With our expertise we are then able to demonstrate solutions - in many cases maintaining existing technologies - which can result in cost savings and increased efficiency.”

Tunicca’s goal is to help companies to apply some measurement criteria to complex workflows and operations. This enables them to assess the performance of pre-media systems and Tunicca’s structured approach helps companies to then make savings. Tunicca provides a business based consulting service in order to deliver business transformation programs, market research projects, technology purchasing strategies and pursuit of best practice.

The Top 12 Options for Web Content Management

2009-08-25T06:17:00.000-07:00

Gartner has published its Magic Quadrant for Web content management in 2009, to help CIOs and IT decide just what will meet the needs of the enterprise. Web software is now the fastest growing sector of the enterprise content management market, according to Gartner, and was valued at more $3.3 billion last year.

This annual report identifies the leaders in the industry. We've picked out the top dozen vendors aimed at enterprise content management on the Web. Here are their strengths and weaknesses, to let you get a handle on what's best for your business.

Leaders

While there's some overlap with generally popular offerings — Drupal-based solutions and open source are getting more attention than ever — most of the top dogs in ECM on the Web are specialist vendors who focus solely on the needs of enterprise. Gartner's choices for who fits inside the Magic Quadrant bear this out.

Oracle remains one of the biggest players in this area, despite being better known in many circles for its databases. What really brought them on the scene was the acquisition of Stellent in 2007, and since then their strength has been integrating WCM into their wide-ranging offerings for content management.

Autonomy, which entered the sector through its acquisition of Interwoven this year, tends to appeal most strongly to the marketing side of WCM. While they offer an ability to deliver content that's highly targeted, WCM will continue to be a sideline in terms of profit. While Autonomy can deliver right now, they lack a detailed roadmap for the future of the product.

Open Text is one of the most well-known in this space, and is the top pure play vendor for content management. Despite a close partnership with Microsoft, Garner predicts that Open Text's top competitor will continue to be SharePoint and other .NET software packages.

SDL acquired Tridion in 2007, and since then has shown impressive growth. This is the result of solid capabilities in multilingual and multichannel content management, as well as robust SharePoint integration.

Challengers

While the three companies listed at challengers by Gartner hardly seem like underdogs, software from Microsoft, IBM, and EMC are increasing in importance very rapidly.

Microsoft's SharePoint is growing enormously in market share as a Web content management solution. In addition to feeding off the trust that the Microsoft name inspires in just about every CIO, one of the strengths of SharePoint compared to current leaders is the partner ecosystem that is growing rapidly, and how tightly integrated it can be with Microsoft's other products in e-commerce, Web analytics and search. Of course, as fast as it grows in WCM, SharePoint is hated for its weaknesses as an intranet and document sharing system.

IBM's greatest strength in content management is also its greatest weakness. The fact that Lotus WCM is vertically-focused and is closely integrated with the entire Websphere Portal makes it appealing to organizations who already use the portal. But for those who don't, Lotus seems lacking without the rest of IBM's system.

EMC has been slowly brewing its WCM capabilities since it acquired the fairly popular Documentum in 2003. EMC is especially good in the sense that it works with a broader ECM solution, and can do DAM and records management of Web content too. It's also shown some of the biggest improvements in its latest release, 6.5, through adding technology first used in X-Hive, an XML database and dynamic delivery environment.

Visionaries

A list of honorable mentions shows up in the Visionaries section of the Magic Quadrant. The label might sound fanciful, but most of these up-and-coming vendors are making a real name for themselves.

Sitecore is a Denmark-based company that's also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Their .NET CMS is unsurprisingly tied to Microsoft in a multitude of ways, which can be either a plus or a minus, depending on where your enterprise stands technologically.

FatWire Software has a Java software package that focuses on collaborative features and analytics, but suffers from what Gartner calls "costly" customization needs to make it play nice with related technologies.

Ektron is especially famous in the SMB market. Its CMS400.NET integrates relatively well with SharePoint Server.

Day Software sells software based on Java EE, and it's made strides in usability. Despite these improvements sales have lagged, and Gartner predicts that the partnerships with IBM and HP that this Swiss-based vendor has will decline in the future, weakening its position.

Clickability is a pure SaaS vendor in Web content management which is making progress with enterprises fed up with the costs of on-premise WCM, even if SaaS remains on shaky ground.

There are at least a dozen more vendors in enterprise-class Web content management who get short mentions in Gartner's report. Solutions such as Alfresco's open source software or Acquia's Drupal distribution might not warrant inclusion in any list of leaders yet, but they're making respectable gains. For a detailed account, be sure to read the full report.

Link to original article: http://www.readwriteweb.com

SeeFile Announces Version 4.7 DAM Software

2009-08-07T02:22:00.000-07:00

Boston, MA – August 5, 2009 - SeeFile Software, the leading developer of web server software for sharing media files, is pleased to announce SeeFile 4.7. This new version offers an elegant web interface, an easy to use media bank and a delivery system accessible from any standard web browser. New development included backend changes, making page loads and image processing faster, optimizing the layout, and adding functionality. SeeFile 4.7 includes the following new features:

Optimized and easier-to-use user interface
Email notifications
Complete log history per user and action
Annotations on multi-page PDF files
Full support for current web browsers: Firefox 3.5, Safari 4 and Internet Explorer 8

The system monitors shared folders and volumes, tracking any changes in the file structure. When a change occurs, SeeFile instantly updates its database and web interface to synchronize with the file structure. Also, while Seefile is detecting changes it automatically renders previews and imports metadata. All of this means that SeeFile customers spend less time uploading files (since there is no uploading required) and less time getting files approved.

A different approach to digital asset management and delivery
Currently available digital asset management systems force users to change their workflow, adding more costs in training and in creating an optimized database. SeeFile offers a solution focused on small and midsize companies. Installing SeeFile takes only minutes, and the solution works like an FTP server (allowing creation of users with home folders) that will fit into nearly any workflow. The system offers all the standard tools available on digital asset management/delivery software. An administrator can create data fields that can be used to tag documents, all the fields, including the imported EXIF, IPTC and XMP metadata, are searchable. To respond to greater expectations from a Web 2.0 application, SeeFile offers collaboration features including annotations on selected areas of images and PDFs, and online approval. With SeeFile, companies involved with photography, print, video, brand management and advertising can archive their media files and manage several projects with their customers for a fraction of the price of other solutions.

Pricing and Availability
The software is priced from $499 to $4,995, depending on number of user licenses.

Gartner survey claims software spending to rise in 2010

2009-08-04T02:34:00.000-07:00

Link to original post: http://www.itp.net/news/563338-gartner-survey-claims-software-spending-to-rise-in-2010

By Nathan Statz on Thursday, July 30, 2009

Analyst firm, Gartner has released the results of a survey showing that 25% of respondents in the EMEA region expect their 2010 IT budget to increase.

As part of the research, Gartner surveyed approximately 1,000 IT professionals worldwide in April and May. When asked whether they expected their 2010 budgets to be below, the same or exceed the IT budget for this year, 25% of respondents from EMEA indicated they expected it to increase along with 30% from the Asia/Pacific, and 28% from North America.

"Software vendors should continue to build, fund and invest in software sales and marketing programs, even during tight market conditions to maintain customers and expand revenue opportunities," said Joanne Correia, managing vice president at Gartner.

The remainder means that 75% of respondents from EMEA indicated their IT budgets in 2010 would be the same or below 2009 levels.

“A market downturn is a disrupter that creates great marketing and sales opportunities for organisations prepared to take advantage of the right products, marketing programs and funding,” added Correia.

The survey follows on from another report released this month by the research firm, where a 6% decrease in global IT spending is predicted for 2009.

Gartner’s research also revealed that software budgets are expected to rise by 0.45% in 2010 in the EMEA region, compared to a global average of a 1.53% increase. The worldwide average is boosted by a predicted 2.54% rise in Latin America and 4.34% in the Asia/Pacific region. North America is expected to decline by 2.06%.

Are we reaching the limits of UI buildout?

2009-07-30T01:37:00.000-07:00

By Kas Thomas, Analyst
CMS Watch, 28 July 2009

As you can imagine, in the course of covering more than 200 software products, my colleagues and I get to see and touch a lot of different user interfaces, and one thing we've all noticed lately is the trend toward larger and larger interfaces. To put it bluntly, many products (particularly in the WCM and DAM spaces) now have client UIs that are just plain enormous. By enormous I mean busy and option-rich, with tons of controls, and often with a super high-resolution monitor required just to see the whole UI.

In the WCM world, products like Alterian Morello, SDL Tridion R5.3, Sitecore CMS, and TYPO3 Canto Cumulus and Mediabeacon R3volution (among others), which have seen UIs grow in tandem with product functionality. (among others) have seen their user interfaces grow to the point where even power users find it challenging to learn the product -- and then stay current on it. The same is true, in the DAM world, for products like

UI sprawl is not limited to any particular tier or type of product, of course. Creeping featuritis has led to bewilderingly complex UIs for Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, and countless other familiar software tools. In the Web CMS world, the problem seems to be compounded by a recent trend toward re-centralization of control and consolidation of roles in web publishing (just the opposite of the trend toward decentralization and specialization that was so common a few years ago) -- whereby power users dominate systems activity, and often system selection.

Looking forward, it's clear that "UI buildout" cannot continue much longer. For many products, cognitive overload is no longer a threat, but a reality. How many toolbars, tabs, nested menus, and clickable controls (not to mention nav-trees in which you have to scroll horizontally as well as vertically to find things) can a mere mortal handle? If a cognitive limit exists, I think we're pretty much there.

The question is, what can be done about it? Is there a way forward?

As a stopgap measure, simply hiding controls based on role can be useful. Many vendors make at least a token attempt to give you control over the visibility of important UI pieces based on a contributor's permissions.

As a whole, though, the industry needs to do a lot better in giving system implementers and admins the power to custom-configure task-based interfaces for different system personas. It can be very difficult (even impossible) in some systems to make a given command just not show up. It's hard to understand why that should be. Not everyone needs every command. Why put controls in a user's face if you don't have to? As noted UI expert Aza Raskin says, "If you notice the interface, that means you're thinking about the interface and not the thing you're trying to do."

It's been said that something like 45% of the features in a typical software system are never used, while another 19% are rarely used. That means the majority of executable code in a product seldom, if ever, executes. Clearly the opportunity exists to scale back UIs. The problem is, products with super-lean UIs don't demo well. In any featuritis arms race, the product that can stand up to the most overspecified RFP has a big advantage.

Maybe there are lessons here for all of us.

Vendors: Strip the UI to a skeleton and make it easy for implementers (and/or administrators, and/or power users) to add functionalities back one by one.

Customers: Stop "requiring the world" in RFPs and PRDs. This only exacerbates the featuritis arms race. And make sure non-tech-savvy casual users (not just power users) are properly represented on product selection teams. It's your non-techies who will push back hardest on hard-to-learn systems -- and ultimately decide the success or failure of the system.

We say it throughout our reports, but: Take time to do some usability testing of your own. Find out up front if a product's UIs are going to be a problem for your organization, and don't assume you can fix the problem with training. Training isn't the answer for users whose tired brains are already, even before you roll out the system, saying, Don't make me think.

More @ http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1652-UI-Bloat?source=RSS

The boondoggle that is software maintenance fees

2009-07-30T01:26:00.000-07:00

By Tony Byrne, Analyst
CMS Watch, 28 July 2009

Annual software support and maintenance fees are something every customer loves to hate, and yet, for the most part we keep paying them. Technology managers fear "going naked," right up until they replace the package. Meanwhile, the underlying economics keep vendors keen to promote what has become a major profit center for most.

And which vendor has perfected the maintenance fee profit engine? You guessed it: Oracle. InformationWeek's Bob Evans explains in an excellent column, "Global CIO: How 22% Annual Fees For You Equals 51% Operating Margins For Oracle."

I think Oracle's success has had a huge influence on the technology marketplace. In the ten years that I've been covering content management, portals, search, et. al., I've seen many other vendors deliberately mimic Oracle's model.

And we're not just talking about commercial vendors here. A new breed of "commercial open source" vendors has also explicitly copied Oracle's approach: if a lion's share of the profits lies in customers paying annual fees, why charge for the software up front at all? Simply invest a little R&D to get started, use consulting projects and whatever the community can muster to drive ongoing innovation, carefully collar tech support costs, grow the company, and then sell it to a larger firm looking to acquire reliable revenue streams...such as Oracle.

These fees would feel less galling if you received great support in return. You've told us over the years that some vendors do indeed excel here. But most do not.

Then there's the thorny issue of supporting the software versus supporting (and upgrading) the implementation. In most sizable projects, someone (either your developers, a consulting firm, or a vendor's professional services arm) has so heavily customized the software that your vendor's tech support can quickly become impotent, save for addressing common bugs or very low-level problems. We've been advising buyers to take a close look at warranties and tech support within any consulting contracts, including those signed with a vendor. Remain particularly alert when buying software via a re-seller -- an increasingly prevalent model in the Web CMS market, as well as several others we cover.

Is there anything to like about maintenance fees? Some observers pointed out on Twitter yesterday that we should at least value the predictability of such expenses, even as we decry the rates (@lehawes). Annual fees help provide a kind of insurance for the customer and enable the vendor to invest in long-term support for the core codebase. And they put less pressure on vendors to front-load their total costs+ profit (@damtrends). Presumably vendors can break-even now, then profit later.

But oh, the profits. As part of our evaluations of publicly-traded vendors, we often listen in on quarterly financial analyst calls, which as Evans notes, can be quite revealing. One of my favorite vendor boasts to equity markets is, "obtaining a higher yield from existing customers." How much should financial performance matter to you the buyer? A little. It's good to know your vendor won't go bankrupt. Nonetheless, I think traditional technology analyst firms do enterprise buyers an injustice by too often conflating a software vendor's financial success with technical acumen or product development skill. (Some analysts also mis-identify vendor marketing and sales acumen with customer value, but that's another story....) I'm quite certain that in the software world, there's no definite correlation between profits and quality. According to Oracle's CFO, there is a correlation between profits and size of maintenance base.

There's some good news, though. We're seeing increasingly better peer-based, community support. This trend is surely more advanced in the open source world, but commercial vendors have been catching on here, too. The availability of peer support has become an important criterion for our evaluations in recent years, and enlightened suppliers are fostering active communication among customers.

Our research reports also instruct technology buyers how to negotiate down annual maintenance rates. In the field, we sometimes receive slack-jawed responses from both the customer ("you mean we can do that?") and the vendor ("you want to carve up our golden calf?"). Yes, on both counts.

Optimizing Digital Asset Management

2009-07-24T01:38:00.000-07:00

Reblog from Business Management
E-Magazine

In an exclusive interview the IDC’s Melissa Webster talks to Business Management about the increasing emergence of digital asset management and the potential for the future of the sector.

“Increasingly what we see is companies wanting to design media and career assets that can be used online and in print, digital asset management can play an important role along that repository”
-Melissa Webster, IDC

Perhaps you could give us an indication of the types of challenges enterprises face when managing their digital assets?
Melissa Webster. First of all it’s a really fragmented market, mainly because there are so many different use cases. For example, if you are talking about the enterprise, typically the needs of the enterprise are revolving around management and marketing and you need to manage a library or repository of assets, which can be shared for worldwide marketing programs and that can be taken and reused by regional or local groups when they kick off their own campaigns. The assets can be marketing collateral, designed for print, web or radio, or they could be brand materials such as logos.

So, depending on what your business is, if you are a large brand manufacturer or consumer goods manufacturer, you are going to have a tremendous amount of content – some of it will be product photos, some of it will be rich media, such as video, audio or multimedia. You need to have expert metadata about your assets so that you can serve up the appropriate version to the right person, in context. Of course the digital asset management (DAM) system also provides the security, authorization and control over who actually says what. That’s part of the equation and it has worked for us for interesting assets and cataloguing them, but also when people use them and implement things like notification and approval workflows and so forth.

How does digital asset management refer to enterprise content management? Are the to related? Do they have unique functions and features?
MW. The difference really lies in the unique workflows, which need to be extremely specific in the case of digital asset management. The digital asset management system hopefully takes apart the asset into its component parts and storing these as separate assets in order that they can be reused in other creative ways without being redundant and then putting those assets back together when need be.

A digital asset management system can be used to help with problems around logo changing. For example, if I need to change the logo in 2000 brochures in 75 places than you can change the logo in one place and reflect that change throughout your current set of print brochures and on to websites. There is this notion that were used and the extensive linking of assets to each other, and we can call that level. There is the unique workforce for the creative process, which is a little different from what we do on the enterprise national side.

Do you see digital asset management as a subset of an enterprise content management system or something completely separate? Is it within an enterprise content management (ECM) solution or is it something that companies will be looking to purchase separately?
MW. That depends on the requirements. Certainly the enterprise content management vendors have for some time offered digital asset management systems. However, there is still a place for DAM solutions, even in organizations that have these ECM offerings from the top ECM vendors if your requirements are specialized. If you are a large print publisher, for example, it may be that your enterprise content management vendors digital asset management solution does not deal well in designed documents and doesn’t manage those components. If you are doing a lot of print publishing, perhaps you need to buy a DAM that is tailored to managing that kind of content because you need to manage the component level so that you can print different renditions or need to dynamically resize things for the web.

How does the increasing digitization of many different types of content and information add to this challenge?
MW. Well, on the one hand we have this tremendous explosion of digital content and that is the case inside the enterprise as well as on the consumer side – we all take more photos with our digital cameras for example. There is a huge distortion of digital content and one of the things that happens is that because everything is digital it is relatively cheap and everybody keeps everything.

On the flipside, having digital makes it so much easier to catalogue, find and search. You can immediately call information based on a search, watch a preview and verify that that is the asset you want, which makes life so much easier. The other thing that is so great about the digital world is that it is easy to create variance of that asset, it just takes a little code, whether that is a transcoding video or audio or whether you are taking a brochure apart and putting it back together in a new way with new ingredients. It is so easy to take, edit and revise different assets.

One of the things we are talking about in this issue is the idea of managing the customer experience across different platforms and channels. What role does DAM play in helping manage that customer experience for companies?
MW. The digital asset management system is a source of direct images, video, audio, the rich media and multimedia formats assets. It might be used in the context on a website with mass logos and text or the applications to enable transaction on that website and other commerce. The DAM is managing ingredients for that process. Increasingly what we see if companies wanting to design media and career assets that can be used be online and in print, so the digital asset management system can play an important role along that repository and surface the right assets for the right publishing point, although they it is not itself providing the web publishing capabilities, that is the job of the web content management system.

Where do you see the market heading next? Is there a major trend that you think will have a big impact on this particular sector?
MW. I certainly think that the trend seems to tightly connect the digital asset management system and the web content management system as an important trend. Increasingly among smaller web content management vendors are integrations with DAM systems and I believe we are going to see that more and more between the web publishing side and the digital asset management side.

We are seeing grand management applications on top of digital asst management systems to provide some of the out-of-the-box workflows that the marketing department needs, either to work internally across a large globally distributed marketing organization or to facilitate collaboration with their advertising and interactive agencies and stakeholders to help in their marketing.

Types of DAM
There are several broad categories of digital asset management systems, including:
Brand asset management systems: With a focus on facilitation of content re-use within large organizations, here the content is largely marketing or sales related. For example, product imagery, logos, marketing collateral or fonts
Library asset management systems: With a focus on storage and retrieval of large amounts of infrequently changing media assets. For example, video or photo archiving
Production asset management systems: With a focus on storage, organization and revision control of frequently changing digital assets. For example, digital media production
Digital supply chain services: With a focus on pushing digital content out to digital retailers. For example, music, videos and games

The FeedRoom Introduces Comprehensive Online Video Solution for Media Relations and Public Affairs

2009-07-24T01:15:00.000-07:00

SaaS Offering Enables Fortune 1000 Enterprises and Government Agencies to Add Streaming Video and Broadcast-quality Downloads to Online Press Rooms in Minutes – at Half the Cost of Branded News Sites

NEW YORK, NY (July 22, 2009) – The FeedRoom, a pioneer in online video communications, and a market leader in live streaming video and digital asset management, today announced a new subscription-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering designed to address the needs of media relations and public affairs professionals looking to add high-quality video to their Web sites and online press rooms. The value-priced offering combines the unique publishing, distribution and measurement capabilities that Fortune 1000 and government communicators require to ensure greater transparency, control and global reach within the changing news distribution landscape, including social networking sites, bloggers, mobile applications and other new media.

A recent study of more than 12,000 journalists and media representatives published by the Institute of Public Relations shows that corporate communicators remain key to helping journalists and editors identify and develop stories, with 94 percent reporting that they rely heavily on organizational Web sites for information. At the same time, the 2009 Online Newsroom Survey reveals that the desire for video by media has increased substantially over the previous year, with more than 80 percent of journalists now wanting to see video files.

“Using online video, in both live and on-demand formats, companies can aid journalists, bloggers and others in building stories, particularly if the video is easily accessible in the resolution and in the format required for broadcast or embedding,” said Mark Portu, President and CEO of The FeedRoom. “One method for addressing this has been the use of siloed, Internet TV channels. What communications professionals sacrifice with this approach, however, is a truly integrated strategy that ties together the marketing, branding and PR initiatives of an organization in more creative and controlled ways – and at significantly lower cost.”

The ability to quickly add video to a virtual press room, produce live news conferences or enable media to directly download high-resolution, broadcast-quality video from an organization’s own site provides greater context, as well as measurement in the form of real-time data on traffic, audience and views. Available immediately, the comprehensive offering includes capabilities for:

Fully customizable user experiences, including a range of player templates;
Secure media download features for podcast, Web and broadcast-quality video;
Syndication support via XML and video RSS feeds;
Support for high-quality, on-demand and live streaming video;
Registration capabilities with approval and communications processes;
Advanced reporting integration with industry standard measurement services and tools.

The new solution is based on the extensive capabilities of FeedRoom 4.0 Enterprise Video Platform^TM, a scalable enterprise video solution that integrates seamlessly with existing content management systems, social media distribution and community tools, and leading Web analytics solutions. The flexible system supports a variety of highly customizable, lightweight video players and the powerful, easy-to-use FeedRoom Studio^TM publishing application. Unlike consumer video-sharing sites, FeedRoom 4.0 ensures positive online brand experiences by providing maximum control over the distribution and measurement of video content for marketing, public relations and corporate communications.

“A well-thought out, online press room can be a great resource to both journalists and PR teams alike,” adds Portu. “With ten years of experience working with leading brands to support their news and crisis communications efforts, we’ve seen a growing number of customers, such as General Motors, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Yum! Brands, The Pentagon and others, able to address the new media landscape more efficiently, while also significantly enhancing the value of their sites for journalists by creating an integrated online media experience.”

White Paper: The Benefits of Video-Enabling Your Virtual Press Room

Download a complimentary copy of “The Benefits of Video-Enabling Your Virtual Press Room: Capitalizing on Digital Media in the Age of Transparency, Social Networking and the 24/x News Cycle ” at www.feedroom.com. This paper discusses methods for making online video an essential part of an integrated, cross-media communications strategy.

http://www.feedroom.com/page/07_09_PR_Solution

Growing need for digital asset management

2009-07-23T02:48:00.000-07:00

Reblog from ZDNet News: Jul 21, 2009
By Hassan Kotob, President and CEO of North Plains Systems

Commentary - Digital asset management, or DAM, has often been described as a process or a tool for organizing the creation, management, distribution, and archiving of rich media assets. In the DAM world, the term “assets” generally refers to rich media files such as images, photos, video and audio, whereas a “file” generally refers to email, documents, records, or scanned images. Creative agencies, publishers and media outlets have long realized the wisdom of utilizing DAM solutions for producing media assets, managing digital rights, conferring with clients, handling review cycles, retouching images, and editing photos and videos.

The growing need for digital asset management
Today, it’s increasingly common for businesses of all kinds to produce corporate videos and podcasts, e-Learning modules, YouTube clips, training materials, brand identity graphics, and more. DAM systems bring order to the creative process involved with producing and leveraging these assets to their fullest extent.

A recent Forrester report noted, “With technologies like digital cameras and inexpensive authoring tools driving asset creation costs down, digital assets are greatly increasing in number and these rich media are being used across a wider range of enterprises. Inadequate management of these growing libraries, however, will make reusing and repurposing difficult, leading many organizations to take another look at DAM.”1 Analysts at IDC concur: “IDC believes the digital asset management market will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of more than 25 percent during the period of 2006-2010, outperforming the overall content management market…and the software market as a whole, by a wide margin…DAM will remain an independent and lively market…given the specialized requirements of DAM solutions.”2

The benefits of DAM
Organizations deploying specialized DAM solutions typically realize the following benefits:

Consistent messaging and brand — With built-in revision control, asset repurposing, and approval processes, DAM systems enable organizations to maintain consistent use and re-expression of digital assets, from brochures to corporate videos to web content.
Generation of new revenue streams — Many organizations have built new business opportunities around the creation of high-value content for internal and external clients by repurposing their assets such as using book covers to promote books online. Consider a photo that costs tens of thousands of dollars to create each and every time. With DAM, it can be reused. Without DAM, its existence may not be known and the re-creation costs are incurred once again.
Cost savings — Organizations gain a return on their investment through the elimination of redundant asset creation efforts and the ability to quickly retrieve assets.
Digital media management and distribution — DAM systems enable the efficient organization, indexing, and distribution of digital assets. Advanced DAM systems provide a distributed architecture and multi-site asset storage, as well as the ability to provide multiple repositories for self-synchronization of both assets and their associated metadata.
Global web-based access — Organizations can distribute digital masters and other types of licensed assets via secure web access. Advanced DAM systems also provide asset ordering and fulfillment modules, and can easily integrate with existing e-commerce and transaction servers.

Vetting DAM solutions
Select a digital asset management system based on your creative needs. This may include management of your organization’s creative assets, managing broadcast and post-production workflows, media enhanced e-learning, video-on-demand repositories, multi-channel distribution, personalized publishing on-demand, and more. Most businesses today will find it beneficial to use a solution that also manages the video creation, editing, collaboration, and management process. This involves ease of integration with video editing applications, video usage standards, and broadcast workflows. Questions you may want to consider before investing in a digital asset management solution include:

Does the DAM solution provide seamless integration with creative authoring tools such as Adobe Creative Suite and Quark or digital editing suites such as Avid and Apple's Final Cut Pro?
Is “work-in-progress” supported by this DAM solution, or does it simply provide the ability to archive your organization’s assets? Some DAM and ECM solutions provide only the archiving capabilities.
Is this a “best of breed” DAM solution? Be wary of vendors who try to be all things to all customers. Give preference to a best of breed DAM solution over an ECM or MRM (Marketing Resource Management) solution that also offers limited DAM functionality which may not meet your requirements.
Can the solution scale? Be sure to select a DAM solution that has the ability to keep up with the growth of your organization and its requirements. And of course, if you are thinking of an enterprise-wide or global implementation, the ability for your DAM solution to easily scale is a necessity.

Conclusion
Until recently, many enterprises have not realized the great need for DAM solutions. The ability that DAM has to manage both documents and digital assets is extraordinary. While many general content management vendors offer basic DAM functionality, they have lost touch with the collaborative process that is so integral to the creation and management of rich media assets. These systems may support the ability to attach static images or even short video clips. However, the proper management of rich media assets requires a more sophisticated approach.

Forward-thinking organizations recognize the need for solutions designed from the ground up to support the creative process. Selecting the best solution that meets your requirements enables organizations to leverage the expertise of both knowledge management and artistic teams to their fullest extent.

Open Text, Autonomy, IBM Among Leaders in Records Management

2009-07-21T01:37:00.000-07:00

Reblog from CMSWire
By Barb Mosher, July 20th, 2009

It's always good to get recognition from the analyst firms because many organizations pay attention to what these guys say. In the ever evolving area of records management, this recognition can help a lot.

According to the report: The Forrester Wave(TM): Records Management, Q2 2009, a number of key enterprise content management vendors lead the wave for records management including Open Text, IBM, EMC and Oracle. Autonomy and CA are also leaders, with Interwoven and HP noted as strong performers.

We took a closer look at what features brought some of these vendors to the top of the pile.

The following figure tells you how companies feel about the need to support regulatory requirements today.

Survey on need for Records Management

As you can see, records management is fairly important to most organizations, regardless of size. That may be because GRC isn't just an issue of larger organizations.

Selecting the appropriate records management solution isn't easy though and it does depend on your requirements. According to Forrester, there are five trends that affect the selection of a records management solution:

Rising demands to mitigate legal risks and challenges
Evolving records management certification requirements
Expanding focus beyond physical records, toward a broader array of digital assets
Converging vendor capabilities for archiving, records management, and eDiscovery
Looking down the SaaS path

Forrester helps evaluate some of the record management vendors out there including: Autonomy, CA, EMC, HP, IBM, Interwoven, Open Text and Oracle. These vendors met certain criteria that Forrester applied which included:

200 deployments or more of the solution in the enterprise market (employees of 1000 or more)
Native support for both physical and electronic records management
Mentioned often by Forrester clients

These aren't the only vendors out there, but here's a look at the leaders in this market and why they rise to the top.

The Leaders in Records Management

Forrester Wave Records Management Q2 2009

Autonomy

Autonomy's Records Management solution is based on their acquisition of Merido back in 2007. Obviously the fact that the solution leverages the IDOL platform is a key component for Autonomy as IDOL enables the pulling together of information from a variety of locations.

Other notable features include integration with their eDiscovery and enterprise archiving solutions, along with the addition of a number of legal experts and significant install base of legal solutions that came with the Interwoven acquisition earlier this year.

The Autonomy Records Management solution is compliant with a number of standards already and they are actively pursuing the DoD 5015.2-STD V3 and MoReq2 standards. Autonomy is also one of two non-enterprise content management vendors to make the leaders for records management (the other was CA).

Open Text

With a particular focus on their current shipping offering, the report also cites "strong physical records management capabilities and retention management support for a wide variety of electronic content types and applications."

With strong integrated solutions for both Microsoft SharePoint and SAP, Open Text does seem to have a good handle on the records management needs of organizations today. In addition, their solution is compliant with a number of standards including the U.S. Department of Defense 5015.2-STD, the United Kingdom's TNA regulations and Australia's VERS regulations.

IBM

IBM made the list for their IBM FileNet Records Manager. It is one of two Records Management solutions that IBM offers. FileNet Records Manager offers support across a number of information assets and is integrated with the FileNet ECM, as well as archiving and eDiscovery solutions.

IBM has achieved certification with all Records Management standards except MoReq2, which they are actively pursuing now.

EMC

EMC's Documentum Records Manager makes the leader list having improved its physical records management capabilities and offering a modular approach for retention management.

EMC is also actively pursuing the DoD 5015.2-STD V3 and MoReq2, having achieved certification for the others.

Oracle

Oracle's record management solution is Oracle Universal Records Management, offering a framework for federated records management and physical records management capabilities. Oracle does not offer native archiving and eDiscovery solutions to integrate with its records management solution, but Forrester notes its language support as another key feature to its position on the list.

Oracle is compliant with the DoD 5015 certifications and is actively pursuing the MoReq2 and VERS certifications.

Want More Details?

This was just a quick look at some of the leaders for Records Management. To get more details about these and the other vendors in list or just to understand more about the records management industry today, get your copy of the report.

NASA erased moon footage - What's the value of your digital assets?

2009-07-20T05:03:00.000-07:00

Image via Wikipedia

On July 20th 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon. To commemorate the 40th anniversary of this historic event, NASA releases restored videos of the lunar excursion.

NASA admitted that it must have erased the original videos of the live TV transmission so that it could resuse the videotape. In the 1970s and '80s, NASA had a shortage of the tapes, so it erased about 200,000 of them and reused them.

The space agency admitted that "A three-year search for these original telemetry tapes was unsuccessful. A final report on the investigation is expected to be completed in the near future and will be publicly released at that time."

NASA senior engineer Dick Nafzger said a the search led to the "inescapable conclusion" that 45 tapes of Apollo 11 video were erased and reused. Nafzger, who was in charge of the live TV recordings back in the Apollo years, said they were mostly thought of as data tapes. It wasn't his job to preserve history, he said, just to make sure the footage worked. In retrospect, he said he wished NASA hadn't reused the tapes.

What's the value of your digital assets? Make sure you can trust you Digital Asset Management software to provide maximum security and searchability for your assets.

Read more:
NASA lost moon footage, but Hollywood restores it (AP)
NASA Releases Restored Apollo 11 Moonwalk Video (NASA)

Autonomy Puts Its Meaning-Based Technology to Media Use

2009-07-16T08:33:00.000-07:00

By Irina Guseva, CMSWire, Jul 16, 2009

Autonomy has partnered with VMS, a provider of media intelligence solutions. VMS will use Autonomy’s meaning-based computing software to build tools for media analysis and competitive intelligence.

VMS is planning to enhance its own PR and advertising solutions for media monitoring, measurement, analysis, competitive advertising and marketing intelligence, workflow management, analytics and PR measurement across all types of media.

Autonomy Interwoven web content management system — powered by Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer — will be used by VMS as an integration point for developing tools that can analyze different types of content and act accordingly.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) will also be part of the offering with Virage MediaBin, where meaning will be extracted from video and digital media.

Audio analytics from Autonomy can be used to analyze speech and music files.

VMS is no stranger to Autonomy’s circle, being their customer and partner. You may know VMS by their products, including Vantage and AdSight.

As Autonomy indicated earlier, meaning-based marketing (and meaning-based everything, really) is indeed coming to the forefront.

Reblog from CMSWire, http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-cms/autonomy-puts-its-meaningbased-technology-to-media-use-005052.php, 17 July 2009

Equilibrium MediaRich Server Enhances Media Management and Delivery Capabilities for Extensis® Portfolio Server™ 9

2009-07-15T01:31:00.000-07:00

SAUSALITO, CA, July 14, 2009 - Equilibrium®, a software and hosted services company that specializes in helping enterprise clients of all sizes to manage, monetize and mobilize content, today announced that MediaRich® processing engine is now providing excellence in media management and delivery for Extensis, a division of Celartem Inc., Portfolio Server™ 9, a market leading digital asset management and media delivery solution.

Portfolio Server 9 allows organizations to deploy multi-channel marketing, control their brand, and with the implementation of MediaRich, effortlessly manage and process rich media, and deliver assets through the Web. The server utilizes a new powerful media-processing engine from Equilibrium. MediaRich offers a new metadata architecture, resulting in extensive file format support and allowing users to catalog and thumbnail virtually any file.

Equilibrium announced a strategic technology partnership with Extensis in June of 2008, where Extensis would integrate Equilibrium's MediaRich for integration into the release of Extensis Portfolio Server.

Continue on http://www.equilibrium.com/2009/07/equilibrium-mediarich-server-enhances-media-management-and-delivery-capabilities-for-extensis-portfo.html

Open source: it's just a license

2009-07-15T01:03:00.000-07:00

By Adriaan Bloem, Analyst, on CMS Watch

A lot of my time is spent evaluating technology, and I have a confession to make: the licensing is one of the least spectacular bits to review. It's certainly relevant, and always one of the things we discuss, but it rarely makes the top-10 issues in a review.

As a student, I spent some time studying information technology law, and I'm still intrigued by the legal technicalities of Apache, GPL, LGPL, and other open source licenses. I will also, from time to time, read the fine print of commercial licenses. Your legal department will probably want to do the same. But you should ask yourself this: is the license really a decisive factor when picking software?

Oddly enough, with open source, it often is. In many European countries, governments are actively pushing for the use of "open source" and "open standards." On a superficial level, that makes a lot of sense. Who'd want vendor lock-in, or extortion by an integrators' truck system? Think of all the advantages. Who doesn't want global interoperability? How could you possibly resist the ability to shape and mold software to your liking? And best of all, it's free!

Of course, in reality, things aren't quite so black and white. First of all, I have to keep repeating that open source isn't gratis ("think of free as in free speech, not as in free beer"). The "free" refers to a model of development and innovation, not to a matter of cost. Get out your calculator and tell me this: what's more expensive over the course of three years. Software that's $30K up front, with a 15% annual maintenance and support fee; or software that's "free," but with $15K a year in "gold support"? Or, if you're planning on doing it yourself, one FTE? It's just an example, but you get the point -- it's very hard to do an enterprise implementation cheap, whichever way you turn it. Large companies like IBM aren't in open source because they've suddenly become philanthropists.

So maybe the real reason is development. You can take the open source software and change it. That may be true, but "closed source" doesn't mean to say you can't modify the code that's on your servers. It's usually a bad idea -- your changes may be lost with the next update -- but then again, the same could happen with open source software's next release. Sure, often you can't really touch compiled commercial code; but how many actually modify and recompile open source C? If you're a software company, developing on the basis of open source, you may want to actively participate in an open source community and help develop the code. But if you're not, all you may want out of the community is free support: see the previous paragraph.

In reality, not only is there a large gray area between black and white, there are plenty of zebras, as well. There's commercial open source, there's shared source, there's community open source, there's community editions, there's open sourced commercial software. There's open source without much of a community, and commercial closed source with a large and active community. There's a lot of mature and stable open source software, and a lot of new and untested commercial software. It's hard to apply any clichés to such a broad spectrum.

There's only one thing you can generalize: open source is a specific kind of license. And discussions about which license is better are rather academic. What you'd want to decide on is what your software should do, if and how you want to customize it, and how easy it is to get support when you need it. That means doing your homework, and finding out the real story: you'll certainly want to know what's behind the facade. And that's something that applies to software under any license.

Reblog from CMS Watch, http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1642-Open-source:-it%27s-just-a-license, 13 July 2009

Extensis Announces Availability of Portfolio Server 9

2009-07-10T07:59:00.000-07:00

Extensis, a division of Celartem Inc., announced the availability of Portfolio Server 9, a digital asset management and media delivery solution. This powerful release allows organizations to seamlessly deploy multi-channel marketing, control their brand, manage and process rich media, and deliver assets through the Web. Portfolio Server 9 introduces a Web Client to allow users to catalog, search, edit, batch convert, automate tasks, and manage assets from anywhere at anytime. This new Web Client and the optional NetPublish component for instantly publishing assets to the Web provide a mechanism for organizations to easily share all types of rich media assets to internal and external teams.

Reblog from EContent Digital Content Strategies & Resources, http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=55024

Major New Release of Open Text Web Solutions Makes Delivering Content-Rich, Personalized Websites Easier Than Ever

2009-07-10T05:14:00.001-07:00

Open Text, a global leader in Enterprise Content Management (ECM), today announced the immediate availability of Open Text Web Solutions 10, the latest release of Open Text’s industry-leading Web Content Management (WCM) software. The new release allows organizations to intelligently manage and deliver a broad set of corporate information to users over the Web, and features extensive usability upgrades, a new technology foundation, and deeper and more comprehensive integration with the Open Text ECM Suite and the SAP NetWeaver® Portal component.reBlog from digitalassetmanagement.org.uk, Digital Asset Management, Jul 2009

Picturehouse New York – October 14, 2009

2009-07-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Picturehouse organizes the only events of their kind in the stock picture business, bringing together buyers and suppliers of photography, illustration and footage in city centre locations around the world.

Picturehouse New York will take place at the The Metropolitan Pavillion (next door to the Altman).

More information on http://www.picturehouse-us.com/event.php?eventID=70 or contact Deborah Free, Picturehouse Marketing US, LLC, 9965 Leroy Pavilion Road, Pavilion, NY 14525, USA, Tel: +1 (585) 768 7880, Fax: +1 (585) 768 2941, E-mail: deborah@picturehouse-us.com

WIPO Global Symposium of Intellectual Property Authorities - Geneva, September 17 and 18, 2009

2009-07-07T09:28:00.000-07:00

Developing Global Intellectual Property Infrastructure for Promoting Science, New Technologies and Innovation Worldwide

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is organizing a Global Symposium of Intellectual Property Authorities to be held on September 17 and 18, 2009, at the International Conference Center Geneva (CICG).

The Symposium will:

provide heads of IP authorities, industry leaders and other stakeholders with an international forum in which to discuss how the present intellectual property infrastructure, could be developed in a coherent way to support increasingly borderless activities for innovation within science and technology communities and industries
Present WIPO’s new vision and strategy for reinforcing and integrating different technical components for developing the global IP infrastructure
involve users of the IP system in the process and create stronger networks between IP authorities and industry/IP practitioners

More information on http://www.cepic.org/documents/Wipo_1.pdf

What Wimbledon and vendor selection have in common

2009-07-04T07:53:00.001-07:00

By Theresa Regli, CMS Watch

As Murraymania swept the UK, I settled into my Court No. 2 seat on Wimbledon's always-action-packed middle Saturday. In addition to the matches of Serbia's Ivanovic, Australia's Hewitt, and Russia's Safina, I had a great view of the Centre Court scoreboard, so during breaks I was keenly watching the results of Andy Roddick's match.

"Andy's got the first set," I said to my cousin, who's studying in London and joined me for the day. "Andy's not playing yet," interjected the Brit to the other side of me. "Yes he is," I said. Pause. "Oh you mean, your Andy," he replied. "Right," I smiled back, "not your Andy, who plays tonight." Then came the most interesting comment: "Well, he's not really my Andy," the gent said. "I'm English, and he's Scottish."

Territorial rivalries are perhaps more pronounced in sport than any other pastime, be it the Boston Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees, the Calgary Flames vs. the Edmonton Oilers, or the New Zealand All Blacks vs. the Australian Wallabies. Such territorial rivalries aren't altogether absent from the content management vendor selection process, either, and I find this much more pronounced on the eastern side of the Atlantic than in my native North America.

Of course, in Europe and the UK there are many nations and territories (both political and historic) in a comparatively tiny geographic area, which makes a perfect petri dish for such rivalries to fester.

When I work with clients or subscribers to help them select vendors, the two or three finalists often end up being very technologically similar, and once tools have been tested and deemed appropriate for clients' environments, the conversations just prior to final selection often become very much "cultural." It's not just about whether the team is qualified, and if the support line is open when their time zone is open for business. It's also about who they are, and when a few hundred thousand sterling or euros are on the table, the rivalries come out in closed-door conversations.

"They're Belgian -- there's so many jokes about Belgium. Isn't there a reason for that?"
"They're Dutch -- so they're blunt, that's good, right? Aren't the Dutch cheap, too?"
"They're German -- so regimented -- is that right for us? What if the schedule slips, will they charge us double?"
I wouldn't even know where to start on the Scandinavian rivalries, which go back to the days when Sweden and Denmark traded off conquering the whole of Northern Europe.

I end up spending quite a bit of time talking with clients about how they can benefit from vendor characteristics that are different from how their company normally functions. A bit of German organization and Dutch bluntness can be a great thing if your company has neither. I also watch vendors make an extra effort to bring in the "local flavor" to meetings -- someone from the local country or territory, if headquarters is on the other side of the continent. This always makes a big difference to buyers -- more than I believe it should. The English sales guy in the meeting in London isn't going to be the one you'll be working with, or providing you the ongoing service you'll need. Good service is good service, regardless of where it's provided from.

As an American who does a lot of work in Europe and the UK, I also experience trepidation on the part of some buyers. "Oh, you're American," I sometimes hear when I connect with a potential client via phone or meet up in person. Well yes, but CMS Watch is also a UK Limited Company, and one of our Principals is a Brit, and I'm perfectly happy to use the word "whilst" and drink a warm beer with you after work, if it makes you more comfortable. (Note: Americans can be even more blunt that the Dutch.) Expertise may be what matters in the end, but it's far from the only factor when closing a deal.

Stereotyping is dangerous, and as the world becomes smaller, you the technology buyer need to think more about benefiting from that which may seem foreign or "too different" for your organization. Yes, chemistry is important, but suppliers should be adept enough to adapt to your environment, and yet bring new approaches and attitudes to the project to help you be successful. Be it tennis or a vendor competition, the most appropriate mix of factors need to come together to create success, and sometimes those characteristics may not be the ones you're used to, or possessed by your fellow countryman.

As for my final take on Wimbledon: I wish Rafael Nadal wasn't injured. I'd love to see Federer break the majors record, but I'd be just as thrilled to see Roddick pull through. I don't care where Andy Murray is from, I'll cheer for him to play well, along with anyone willing to call himself a Briton.

May the best player win, wherever he's from.

Reblog from CMS Watch, http://www.cmswatch.com/Trends/1636-Wimbledon-Selection#idc-container, 2 July 2009

Effective image cataloguing

2009-07-01T02:41:00.000-07:00

Repost from Canon Professional Network

Can you find the image that you want in less than five minutes? If the answer is ‘no’ then you may need to explore what are the best options for cataloguing your photographic work. The advent of digital image capture has caused a profound change in the photographic industry. Not only in the way that images are captured, but also in the number of images that photographers work with and how they are catalogued.

Rapidly filling archives are a great incentive to create a robust solution for backup and cataloguing images, but while backup is a regular subject between photographers, discussion of cataloguing and image databases almost seems to be taboo.

Databasing for images - otherwise know as Digital Asset Management or ‘DAM’ - is now a big business and the range of software products available to catalogue them has increased substantially, but finding a solution to fit individual needs is not always easy.

What type of software do you need?

Many think that applications like Adobe Bridge are image-cataloguing software and that by having their files arranged in a folder structure, with an overview provided by Bridge, they have an image database. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Adobe Bridge is an excellent file browser but file browsers can only display readily accessible photos. Using Bridge to view photos (or other media assets), your computer hard drive must contain the original files, or must be connected to storage media that contains the files.

An image like this could be keyworded under ‘South Africa’, ‘lions’, ‘wildlife’, ‘waterhole’, ‘bush’ and ‘Kruger National Park’ amongst other potential categories.

The key functionalities that differentiate catalogue software for cataloguing an image database from simple file browsers are as follows:

Offline working - for adding metadata, searching and editing remote catalogues.
The ability to create multiple subsets of images within the main catalogue.
Detailed image searches.

Traditionally, the range of image cataloguing software for photographers has been limited with the key players including Microsoft Expression Media (formerly iView Media Pro), Extensis Portfolio, Fotostation Pro and ACDSee.

The relatively recent arrival of the Apple Aperture and Adobe Lightroom software packages have extended that list, as both of these have all of the necessary ingredients to be considered as cataloguing applications, with the added benefit of containing sophisticated image processing ‘front ends’.

The only way to see which of these applications works for you is to download the trial and experiment with adding metadata, and searching. The process is not a quick one, but neither is creating the final catalogue - a process that may require hundreds of hours to complete.

While the above applications meet the needs of individual photographers with relatively small archives, newspapers, magazines and agencies require a more robust, server-based system. While the basic operation is similar, these systems are geared up for multi-user access, robust security and multi-layered backup solutions. In many cases these are bespoke or customised versions of ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions.

Components of an image catalogue

An overview of the image, together with its specifications and the catalogue it has come from, in Extensis Portfolio.

Key ingredients to ensuring a successful image catalogue of any size include:

A robust storage solution, with adequate backup.
Excellent image previews.
An intelligent file naming system.
A consistent and carefully thought out keywording system.
Subsets or grouping of images within the larger catalogue.

The ability to find the required images rapidly is the most important requirement of any image catalogue and keywording, along with file naming, is key to this.

Keywording is a complex subject and it is important to consider the subject carefully. If you have an image of your vehicle, you may well describe it to a European as a ‘car’, to an American as an ‘automobile’ and to another person as your ‘wheels’ - the keywords for the image have to include all of these, as well as perhaps ‘Ford,’ ‘hatchback’ and many more.

Keywording has to be broad enough to be inclusive, but tight enough to narrow down a search rapidly to the required images. David Riecks, author of the website www.controlledvocabulary.com, has spent a great deal of time on this subject and he now retails list of controlled vocabulary, specifically to allow more accurate keywording of photographic images.

Keywording has to be broad enough to include the correct images but tight enough to isolate them. Here is a detailed view of thumbnails and keywords from travel photographer David Noton’s images of a Chilean wine region.

The 100,000 image watershed

In many cases 100,000 images is a watershed. For an individual photographer, it is a very large number and may represent many years of work, assuming that images are edited along the way.

For a large photographic agency like ThomsonReuters, this may represent a much shorter length of time, including as it does, the output of many or in some cases, hundreds of photographers.

The individual photographer

David Noton is a travel and landscape photographer with a library of pictures that stretches back over 25 years for stock, publishing, advertising, and his programme of exhibitions, writing and talks.

David administers his collection with the help of his wife, Wendy Noton, and office manager, Sharyn Meeks. He also calls upon a specialist third party keyworder to bring maximum value to his images.

David Noton used the image location as the basis of his file naming system. Here is a list view of his UK images from Dorset.

David Noton’s workflow stages are interesting:

All images are captured in RAW.
Initial edit and selection by David Noton.
Processing to 16-bit TIFF by David Noton.
Basic captioning by Wendy Noton.
Low-res copies sent off to a specialist keyworder.
Minor dust busting and clean up. Images added to database by Sharyn Meeks and Wendy Noton.

David moved over to digital from film completely around four years ago. He has used Extensis Portfolio for some time and, although the bulk of his archive is digital, film-based images have also been scanned and added to the system.

His digital archive consists of around 15,000 carefully edited and captioned/keyworded images. The portfolio catalogue is fast and images can be found in a few seconds. To speed things up David has two parallel archives - full resolution files at camera native size and a smaller ‘low-res’ archive for searching and client previews, with each file typically around 1Mb.

The Agency - Reuters

In stark contrast, the agency Reuters aims to deliver around 1,700 images a day to its clients, primarily in the news and magazine industries. Although it's on a far large scale, the workflow is not too dissimilar to that of the individual photographer.

The Reuters packages page clearly shows the diversity of content the agency produces. These are very important for clients who want to browse through particular subject areas more granularly, not just the standard News, Sport, Archive and Entertainment topics.

Images are filed by photographers to the Reuters Global Picture desk in Singapore by internet, mobile and satellite phone. Typically images will be filed as high quality JPEGs with the photographer encouraged to hold on to the RAW or unedited camera JPEG for possible reuse in different markets. Photographers are responsible for adding accurate title and caption information to images before filing; encompassing location, event, subject names and details.

Images are handled by Reuters’ Singapore editing desks, where they are cleaned when necessary, edited and assigned supplementary catalogue codes before being uploaded to the Mediaplex distribution system. The supplementary codes (‘Supp codes’) have been agreed between all the major agencies and ensure that images are automatically distributed to the correct image feeds requested by clients. Reuters has taken this one step further by ensuring that the ‘Supp codes’ for pictures synchronise with those used for text, ensuring that a picture search on Reuters' Media Express system or the client’s own databases will also bring up the matching story.

For instance, these codes include ‘ENT’ for Entertainment and ‘SOC’ for Soccer. Others include health, politics, education, society and many more.

A sub-selection of the best ‘feed images’ is selected by the Singapore desk for detailed keywording to allow the images to be added to the Reuters Pictures archive, a smaller and more specialist archive of images.

Once the images have been keyworded they are added to a powerful and sophisticated Cortex database created by Orange Logic digital asset management software.

A small Reuters keyword tree for the word ‘School’, showing what comes underneath this branch and above it.

Reuters has the challenge of continuing to supply its existing markets with timely news pictures for which the agency is best known, whilst at the same time seeking to supply new markets with a broader range of imagery as befits a picture agency. Careful keywording is a key constituent of this and the system is reliant on human input, utilising a ‘keyword tree.’ A keyword tree is effectively an automated form of controlled vocabulary that can rapidly be drilled down, so for instance, the term ‘Trafalgar Square’ will automatically add-in ‘London’, ‘England’, ‘Europe’, ‘Capital’, and ‘City’ as other valid search terms.

Isolating images within the larger database is the purpose of a well-constructed image catalogue. Kevin Coombs, editor, News Pictures Production, at Reuters says that: “Effective search and retrieval is the most important tool in our industry today.”

The challenge for individual photographers and agencies alike is to successfully upscale this to deal with ever-greater numbers of images and increased throughput. However, effective and targetted image cataloguing can result in extra business for both the individual photographer and the larger picture agencies around the world.

Links:

PACA 14TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: OCT. 16-18, 2009

2009-06-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

PACA is the Picture Archive Council of America, the trade organization in North America that represents the interests of stock archives of every size, from individual photographers to large corporations, who license images for commercial reproduction. Founded in 1951, its membership includes over 100 companies in North America and over 50 international members.

The 2009 International Conference will take place at the Eden Roc, A Renaissance Resort & Spa in Miami, which is listed as one of The New York Times' "53 Places to Go" in 2008.

Hotel reservation can be made at the special negotiated rate of $239 per night (on bookings made before September 24) online at http://tinyurl.com/2009-PACA or by phone - call 800/319-5354 or 305/531-0000 and give the Group Code "pacpaca".

Attendance fees at PACA 14th Annual International Conference include breakfasts, lunches, and cocktail receptions. Early-bird discounts end on July 31. Marketing Hub tables and sponsorship opportunities are available too.

Register on http://www.pacaoffice.org/ic/paca/event/event44.html

Read more and watch the video from Image Source: "Christina Vaughan, Founder of Image Source, speaks from her New York office about why Image Source, who have the biggest distribution netword, will be in Miami": http://www.pacaoffice.org/conference.shtml

Christina Vaughan elected as President of the European Trade body, CEPIC

2009-06-05T05:50:00.000-07:00

Christina Vaughan, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Image Source, the world’s leading producer of royalty free stock imagery, is elected as the new president of CEPIC.

CEPIC, the Coordination of European Picture Agencies Press Stock Heritage, announced the result of the official committee members’ vote at their annual congress in Dresden, Germany. CEPIC represents over 1,000 picture sources in Europe, providing the single united voice for the photographic industry.

Christina becomes the youngest ever President to head CEPIC, the first woman and the first person of mixed heritage in the role.

More on http://www.prlog.org/10249707-christina-vaughan-elected-as-president-of-the-european-trade-body-cepic.html