Media Asset Storage

When we talk with people about digital asset management, we’re often using techy jargon and fluffy marketing-speak to help marketing and IT teams understand the value of using digital media management systems for their images and videos. This time around, we’ve decided to relate DAM software technologies to everyday encounters and common conveniences. This video kicks off a new series on “DAM Analogies from the Widen CEO on the Beanbag” (for those that follow my tweets @mgonnering we recently made a purchase from Awesomesack.com) focusing on “getting organized.”

In this analogy, I relate getting organized with your images, videos and marketing materials in a DAM system to the use of storage bins and totes for all your stuff in your basement. Check it out and stay tuned for more DAM analogies. Leave a comment or tweet @mgonnering to provide your best DAM analogy.

Join Widen at the Premiere of Createasphere Digital Asset Management and Explore the Global Issues of DAM with the Experts

WHEN:    
February 17th & 18th, 2010 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM

WHERE: 
The Universal Hilton
555 Universal Hollywood Dr.
Universal City, CA

WHAT:   
The premiere of Createasphere Digital Asset Management Exposition is specifically designed to bring together technology leaders, entertainment and media organizations and an interdisciplinary group of practitioners to define the future, and current best practices specific to entertainment, broadcast, gaming, advertising and media.

WHO:   

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
9:00 AM – 10:15 AM

Keynote: Studio Panel - "Vision 2010 and 2020"
Stan Scoggins - Universal, Scott Phelan - Fox Filmed Entertainment, Tim Padilla - Warner Bros., Jamie Voris - NFL, Garrett Smith - Paramount Pictures, Paul Nicholson - ShowTime, Moderated by Dan McGraw - Seven Dials Media

Panels include:

• DAM 101- What is it and what you need to know
• dpBestflow – The Best DAM Resource on the Web
• The 21st Century Career: Digital Librarians, Archivists, Project Management and So Much More
• The Strategic Business Case for DAM: When, Why & ROI
• The DAM Admins Open Source Toolbelt - Free Tools You Need to Know This Year
• Distributing Rich Media: The Competitive Edge Is Knowledge
• Using Social Media in DAM
• Positioning of DAM
• Exploring the Process to Manage, Manipulate & Deliver Video Content

Thursday, February 18th, 2010
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM

Keynote: "The Evolution of DAM (Digital Asset Management)"
Alex Grossman, Active Storage

Panels include:

• The Role of Taxonomy & Metadata in Digital Asset Management
• Capitalization on Storage
• Metadata - The Message is IN the Media
• Reinventing Everything: The desktop paradigm moves to the web
• Rights Management & Content Protection of Assets
• Managing Worldwide Workflow: Digital Is a Global Initiative
• Order from Disorder: Taming the Digital Chaos
• Powerful Tools & Techniques for Enhancing Searching Capabilities

See Panel Schedule and Speaker Information

In addition to two days of panels and keynotes, the Createasphere DAM conference features lunchtime roundtables, networking opportunities, and other community building events and opportunities for education and connection. 

For Information and Registration, visit: http://www.createasphere.com/damem_february

Almost everyone nowadays has a digital camera, even if it's just on their mobile phone. This means that data and images are no longer stored in file folders and photo albums, but on hard drives and memory cards. While this technology is superb for working with images, it is not without risks. Storage devices can get damaged or stolen and then your precious memories are lost.

Transition that into the business world where there is more digital media and more users requiring access on a daily basis. A memory is to an individual like a brand is to an organization. What does is stand for? How is it perceived? What do people think of when they see a brand’s assets? To consistently market a brand in today’s multichannel environments, digital media and brand assets must be protected and delivered using the most reliable solution.

What options are available to help protect digital media and brand assets?

Many people make multiple back-ups of their computer systems and storage devices. This is great for a while but eventually you end up with back-ups of back-ups with loads of duplicated data. Alternatively, you run the risk of deleting files that you think you have backed up only to discover that you did not. An online Digital Asset Management (DAM) system is therefore something worth considering. It has multiple functionalities, is quite simple to use, cost-effective to purchase, and can help manage all of your digital media very effectively. 

How does a Digital Asset Management system work?

A DAM system is made up of various software functionalities to assist in the creation, management and distribution of digital media. If your organization has multiple internal and external stakeholders, there may be additional applications helpful on both ends of the spectrum—creation and distribution. Here's a brief overview of the various applications that fit the digital asset life cycle.

At the core, a digital asset repository helps you to centralize photos, logos, creative files and other digital media. DAM makes it easy to search for specific media files, convert and distribute them using a web-based platform. You can access your files easily and conveniently—even if the files are very large. A video asset management system is similar in that it allows you to preview, transcode and send video and audio files across the web without much effort. This is particularly useful when working with tight deadlines and you need a convenient delivery method.

If you frequently have to select photographs from portfolios for various creative and advertising projects, then a collaboration application would serve as a versatile feature of a DAM system. Working upstream in the creative workflow from the general DAM repository, web-based workflow and collaboration tools allow photography and creative teams to review and approve the photos that you wish to use. Additionally, when working on specific creative or marketing projects, project owners can coordinate reviews, track comments and approvals on modified versions and keep design teams on track for a streamlined workflow.

Downstream from the general digital asset repository, partners and sales channels can create custom marketing and sales collateral with a dynamic media building tool. Using predefined templates and content options, non-technical or non-creative users can create localized ads, brochures, direct mail and signage. This feature allows sales channels and affiliates to produce brand-approved collateral for campaigns, product launches, events or special promotions at a local level.

What are the benefits of using a Digital Asset Management system?

A big plus of any DAM system is that it helps you manage and search for files in a centralized system for all types of digital media. No more searching for the CD with the photos from last year’s campaign; simply view, organize and retrieve assets online. Web-based DAM systems are designed to be simple and easy to use, and users do not need to be technical experts to get what they need.

An equally important benefit is that a DAM system offers a safe storage facility for your files. Hard drives may fail from time to time, and CDs can get lost or damaged. In that case, you may not be able to retrieve your precious brand assets. A web-based DAM system has necessary back-ups, ensuring that you will always be able to access your photos and videos even if you change your computer hardware.

DAM is a critical technology for organizations with collaborative workflows needing a single storage and access point. Collaboration is particularly useful for staff in the media industry and corporate marketing environments. DAM systems make life much easier in being able to review, approve, search, share and download files that are typically too large for more limiting means of collaboration. The system effectively becomes the virtual meeting point for everyone across different geographic locations, which is both convenient and cost-effective.

Lastly, one of the most critical issues that a DAM system helps to solve is safeguarding an organization’s brand by ensuring only the most current assets are used. An online DAM system provides the easiest access point to approved brand assets. Being able to easily retrieve assets helps to ensure internal and external users turn to the DAM system first as opposed to other unattended sources. Governance features such as roles and permissions help administrators regulate who can see what assets. Assets for future or past due uses can be on hold or archived so the general user doesn’t have access.

Digital Asset Management helps organizations be more efficient, effective and in greater control over the vast amounts of digital media and brand assets at every critical stage of the digital asset life cycle.

The growing popularity of video is well documented... There are a number of reports available. They explain the power and attractiveness of using video, specifically in the enterprise environment.

More than 65% of companies are using online video and that number is expected to continue increasing (VideoBloom, 2009). (Remember an earlier post, Gartner Predicts 25 Percent of Content in the Workforce to be Images, Audio or Video by 2013.) Online video is a key method of delivering and consuming information that educates, entertains, and/or inspires in ways that touch emotions static text on a page cannot achieve.

Director of research and design at Stanford University's Persuasive Technology Lab, Dr. BJ Fogg, writes that for a consumer to make a purchase, it requires a “behavior change.” Fogg’s behavior model talks about the convergence of three things that need to happen for the change to occur – a trigger, ability and a motivation. Motivation is strictly tied to “sensation.” Inherently, video combines the use of more human senses than most other traditional sales and marketing tools. Read more about the reason "why" video use is on the rise in business marketing.

How does that impact Digital Asset Management? Video is a digital asset. As its popularity grows, enterprises will struggle to manage the creation, storage, and distribution of it. Video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Multiple copies of a file in multiple locations use even more storage. Version control is nearly impossible since someone has to remember each file's location and update or renew it when a new one becomes available or when it expires. Plus, there isn’t always an easy way to search for the right video based on the content. Beyond that, an increase in video will also mean an increase in the amount of bandwidth required to serve the video – a requirement that many SMBs struggle with.

We can learn a lot just by looking at trends within Widen’s own organization and DAM software customer base. There are notable increases in not only the number of video assets being added to our DAM systems, but also in the rate of videos added per year. Due to the raw size of high resolution video, the percentage of the overall file size of our DAM taken up by video has grown extensively. Again, the rate of growth per year is also increasing as we choose to use video more and more for marketing, sales and customer service purposes.

From a sales and marketing standpoint, there are dramatic increases in the coverage of video as a topic in many of our sales calls, and in RFPs that we receive. There are a number of factors that are causing these increases. One is the growing popularity of video. Again, this is well documented. In addition, there is the entire social movement. For video, this requires organizations to not only produce video content, but to make it accessible and publish it to as many online video channels as possible.

An often unnoticed factor is the shift in video camcorder technology from “tape” to “tapeless.” Tape has been a crutch for video storage and backup for… well, for forever. With the new tapeless camcorders recording very high resolution files resulting in very large file sizes with no tape to put them on, suddenly, organizations are faced with storing, securing, backing up, and distributing files that are ten times the size of the files they are familiar with managing. And remember, it is GROWING!

Bottom line, the increasing demand for video will place demands on DAM software and digital asset hosting providers to make sure that video is handled seamlessly alongside all other assets.


Stats on video usage from VideoBloom's VIEW Index (Video-Enabled Web Index):
100 Web Sites Surveyed

In August of 2009, the VIEW main index for the 100 surveyed companies was 30-75-25, which indicates that 30% of the companies had video on their home page, 75% had video on their site, and 25% didn't use any video on their Web site.

• 41% of the 100 surveyed companies have placed their Web videos 1 click away from the home page.
• 25% of the surveyed companies have placed their Web videos deep into their Web sites, 3 clicks or more away from the home page.
• 25% use online video in an advanced manner: contextual integration of videos, variety of video players, call-to-action tied to the video.
• 32% offer a full-fledged "video center" comparable to a corporate TV channel.
• 21% give access to such video center directly from their home page (one click away).
• 12% display video ads for products on their site; 7% display video ads on their home page.
• 36% offer full-screen video option.
• 4% have video on auto-play (i.e. video starts as soon as the user lands on the page).
• 11% open video in a new browser Web page.
• 18% use a pop-up window to display video.

• Video uses: 48% of the surveyed web sites use video for promotional purposes, 24% use it for informational purposes, 20% use it for demonstrative purposes, 6% use it to deliver news, 5% use it for entertainment purposes, 1% use it for other purposes and 0% use it for UGC (user generated content). (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because many sites use online video for several different purposes.)

• Video formats: 61% use Flash video, 21% use Windows Media Player, 8% use QuickTime and 4% use Real Player. (The percentages don’t add up to 75% because some websites use more than one video format.)

I had a little fun with the 12-second Widen segment from the SIIA OnDemand 2009 Day 1 in Review video. In this video segment, Widen CEO Matthew Gonnering, preaches “Service is equally, if not more, important than the technology itself” when it comes to delivering Digital Asset Management Software as a Service. Check it out…




Catch the original video here: SIIA OnDemand 2009 Day One in Review


Keywords: DAM SaaS, Digital Asset Management Video, Digital Media System, Digital Asset Tracking, Video Hosting Service, Media Asset Storage.

Widen is seeing increased interest in Video Asset Management solutions to store, manage, access and deliver digital video for online video marketing purposes.

As Sean Callahan recently reported in the Marketers Make Move to Online Video article in BtoB’s Best 2009 special issue for Marketers and Creative, the “Internet has accelerated the creative use of video in b-to-b marketing, which is one key trend we saw in the submissions for this year’s BtoB’s Best.” 

Online video has become an affluent medium for both b-to-b and b-to-c marketers alike. Online video is a key method of delivering and consuming information that educates, entertains, and/or inspires in ways that touch emotions static text on a page cannot achieve. Best of all, online video isn’t just for big companies. An abundance of devices and software for video capture and editing are becoming popular additions for many marketing departments. Furthermore, Web-based DAM technologies are making the management and distribution easier and cheaper for organizations of all sizes.

In terms of viewership, the Nielsen Company recently reported viewers have substantially increased the time they spend watching online videos with YouTube being by far the single largest provider of streaming video. Nielsen's time-per-viewer metric rose to 195.2 minutes per month in September, a 25% year-over-year increase.  Read Time Spent Viewing Video Online Up 25% per Viewer to learn more.

While the popularity of creating and consuming online video continues to skyrocket, the problems with video asset management are still there for nearly all marketers. The downside is video files are exponentially larger than text documents. Multiple copies of a file in multiple locations use even more storage. It also makes version control nearly impossible, since someone has to remember each file's location and update or renew it when a new one becomes available or when it expires. Plus, there isn’t always an easy way to search for the right video based on the content.

When you add all those factors, it makes a compelling argument for software-as-a-service that simplifies the tasks associated with managing, finding and distributing video content across the Web. The problem is that a lot of organizations that can benefit from distributing their content in the form of video; they just don’t have the internal infrastructure to support it. Like most projects that are challenging to do on your own, digital asset management can benefit from a software-as-a-service model that allows customers to focus more on what they want to accomplish than figuring out how to go about building and maintaining it.

In Widen’s recent article, RAM: Bandwidth on the Run, the increased demand for video content creates four issues that require more efficiency in how we manage video assets:

• Not enough bandwidth to meet demand.
• Difficulty moving video files from one user to another.
• Multiple copies in multiple locations.
• Lack of searchability.

However, digital media asset management technologies provide much more than simple file management or a video hosting service. Digital media files become assets of value through the attachment of metadata because they can be indexed, versioned, secured, stored and assigned a lifecycle state, a unique ID and an owner. Digital Asset Management systems serve as the keeper for both the files and metadata.

Benefits of digital asset solutions summarized from the Bandwidth on the Run article, include:

• All users watch the same file from the same source.
• Easier distribution.
• Greater control over what is being viewed.
• Simpler, more effective organization.
• Simplifies backup.

For an expanded explanation, read the article titled RAM: Bandwidth on the Run by Matthew Gonnering, CEO of Widen Enterprises.

The recent KMWorld article DAM takes on many roles reports “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.”

KMWorld reports the annual market stands at about $600 million, and historically has posted double-digit growth. ABI Research forecasts the market to top $1 billion in 2013.

Feeding the DAM growth is the increased volume of rich media coupled with the wealth of devices to create, send and receive digital media. Furthermore, The Association of Graphic Solutions Providers (IPA) reports an increasing number of multi-channel targeted marketing programs have caused an explosion in the number of digital assets to manage.

Moreover, Frost & Sullivan reports that apart from the increased creation and use of digital media, the average file size of content is also increasing. To take the example of images, both the files size and the pure number of digital images taken have steadily increased each year. This is true for almost all media types from text to images and audio/visual content. The emergence and popularity of high definition video has been further fueled by the availability of numerous devices to receive content. This burgeoning demand has created a huge infrastructure challenge. High resolution images and video are storage and bandwidth intensive. For more on the DAM Market Overview and Challenges, download the DAM as SaaS 2.0 Whitepaper from Frost & Sullivan.
 

It’s a “Wired” World – Devices to Create, Send and Receive Digital Media

The increasing volume of digital media is again fueled to the increasing number of devices available to create and consume digital media. The mobile wireless market for handheld devices is another market that has become a huge user of digitized media. Interestingly, Widen worked with a 3rd-party market research company in the first half of 2009 for an analysis of digital asset management programs and social media. One of the questions asked was “What consumer electronic devices do you own and use?”  Just for fun, here are the results…



Digital Camera, Laptop/Notebook Computer, Portable Media Device (iPod) and Cell Phone with Camera are the most common electronic devices owned and used (n=94).


Top Digital Asset Management Market Drivers according to ABI Research

• Increase in the need to collaborate workflows across divisions in an enterprise
• DAM systems no longer operate in a silo environment
• Move to nonlinear digital workflows will drive demand
• Improved operational efficiencies maximizes the ROI on a DAM system
• Increase in bandwidth, fall in the storage cost will boost the demand of DAM
• Continued effort in marketing initiatives will increase the demand for DAM
• Creative professionals adopt DAM tools
• New and emerging markets will drive the demand for DAM systems
• Adoption of digital media technology enhances the growth of the market
• Multiple channels of content delivery will increase the demand for DAM solutions
• Content is king: Premium content, HD and video services will drive the growth

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Betty, the director of marketing for a division II university.  I just took a position with the U about 2 months ago and I’m leading an initiative to implement a digital asset management system by start of the semester.  It’s one of those summer projects that I didn’t want to let pass me by.  We have hit a wall in managing our institution’s digital assets.  Our photos, logos, videos, and marketing documents are scattered everywhere across the network and the IT department has come down on us to clean it up.  Every department is creating their own stuff when we could be doing a lot better job sharing and re-purposing each other’s work and master assets.  Not to mention how difficult it is to keep the school’s branding and reputation in check.   With more departments, more people in different locations and more channels where our stuff is used… we have a problem.  It was manageable when we just had printed materials, but with the advance of the web and social networking sites, we need a master repository to keep everything together.  This master repository should be the communications hub for marketing, athletics, library, media relations, photography services, crisis communications, event support, webcasting and videography.  Does such a thing exist? 

DEAR BREAK DOWN THE WALL BETTY:  Sure thing!  Widen has helped several other colleges and universities on a very tight budget implement a 100% web-based digital asset management solution.   The Widen DAM solution will allow you to centralize digital content for multiple departments.  Photographers have ability to upload assets and add metadata.  Marketing can store, share and retrieve images and brochures with ease.  The Athletic department can store videos and convert to different formats on-demand.  You can control access levels to keep all departments separate and provide for various roles at each level.  Your top-level admins keep the University’s master assets and insignias in check and delegate administration to each department head to regulate their own digital media system.  Best of all, you can get up-and-running with training in 4-6 weeks – just before homecoming!  It’s no short term solution either; Widen DAM software is scalable to meet unlimited storage size growth.  It’s like comparing apples and oranges when pinned against installed solutions in the same price range.  Best of all, you’ll appreciate their special pricing for educational institutions.

I have been asked by many potential clients as to what is the best way to store video in a digital asset management system. There are a couple different ways to answer this. "Highest res," "high enough," and "this is all I have."

Highest Res: Whether the video is HD, or standard definition, it was acquired, or shot, on a video camcorder that recorded the footage in a specific format. This changes a bit if you take into consideration editing and effects, but based on just the video footage alone, the format the video was shot in is the “Highest Resolution.”  If it was shot on a standard definition camcorder in the DV format, then that is the highest resolution (assuming it has not been recompressed). If it was shot on an HDV camcorder, then that is the highest resolution available, and typically what is stored as the master format. No additional recompression has been done that could degrade the quality. If you are making footage available, through your DAM, or your video asset management system, this is what they will want.

Here is a screen capture from a file off the camera:




High Enough: This could also be called a “Mezzanine format,”  or “Proxy.” High resolution video can have very large file sizes, that in high volumes, can make digital asset management cost prohibitive.  In many corporate marketing asset workflows, editing has already taken place, and the goal is access and distribution of finished video assets. Compression can be applied to video files to reduce file size while maintaining an acceptable level of quality. As video compression technology has gotten better over the past 10-15 years, some compression methods can reduce file sizes by 50-75% while maintaining a virtually indistinguishable visible difference in quality. So for the purpose of either viewing the video, or converting it to smaller, more compressed versions for email, or powerpoint presentations, a mezzanine format provides good enough quality while taking up 50-75% less disk space and bandwidth. This option gives you the high resolution viewing, and repurposing, while minimizing file storage. It will be the best option for most corporate marketing department's media asset storage and repurposing needs.

Here is a screen capture of a Mezzanine format. Notice there is very little difference:



This is all I have: It is common that marketing departments find or stumble upon video files that they would like to repurpose. All too often, they have “found” a highly compressed low resolution version of a video.  If there is no way to go back to a master tape, or find the company that produced the video, then essentially you have the highest resolution of a video that just isn’t very hi res. That does not mean that it can’t be viewed and repurposed. This is unfortunately all to common, but it is ok.

Here is an screen capture of a highly compress video. It is not great, but it will work if it is all you have.

The current issue of Business Management Magazine has an interview with industry analyst Melissa Webster of IDC, a leading technology research company.  The article, Optimizing Digital Asset Management on page 86, includes a section devoted to defining the Types of Digital Asset Management Systems.

The types of Digital Asset Management (DAM) Systems that are mentioned in the Business Management article include the following:

Brand asset management systems: Focus on content re-use of marketing and sales materials such as product images, logos and marketing collateral.

Library asset management systems: Focus on storage and retrieval of large amounts of infrequently changing media assets—video and photo archiving.

Production asset management systems: Focus on storage, organization and revision control of frequently changing digital media.

Digital supply chain services: Focus on pushing digital content out to digital retailers, such as music, videos and games.


Brand Management & Marketing Operations

• DAM Library of Photo Archive
• Basic Brand Management
• Multi-Lingual Brand Management
• Marketing Asset Production & Distribution
• Ad Production

Publishing

• Periodicals Production & Distribution
• Multi-Channel Publishing
• Catalog Production
• Rights-Managed Syndication & Distribution

Video Production

• E-Learning
• Video Ad Review & Approval
• Short Form Video Production
• Broadcast Video Production

This DAM analyst firm suggests Widen’s digital asset management services are best fit for these use cases:  dam library or photo archive, basic brand management, marketing asset production & distribution, and catalog production & management.

Widen’s 11 most recent customers added in Q2 2009 fall into several of these overlapping use cases, but primarily fall into the brand management and marketing operations category.  Nonetheless, they all adopted Widen digital asset management tools to make creative workflows more streamlined, improve brand consistency and be more agile marketers. 

Do you agree with the breakout of the types of Digital Asset Management systems above?  How would your use cases agree or differ? 

As I field questions from potential customers about adding video to their digital asset management system, I tend to field the same type of question. “I have a QuickTime file. Is that good?” That is really a loaded question. The next statement is….”It is 100 Megabytes. Is that good?”

I will attempt to explain how video bandwidth is the intersection where time length avenue and storage size street cross. Unlike an image file, video is a time-based media. It not only has a resolution, but it has a time length, over which the resolution is maintained. Compression is used to help keep quality up and files size down, but that is for another blog topic.

“Storage” is static….a 100 MB video file sitting in your video asset management system is much like a one gallon bucket of water sitting on a counter. “Bandwidth” has motion to it. If the video is 1 minute long, and you are watching it online, your internet connection (or pipe) will have exactly 60 seconds to pull through 100 MB of data. If we think of the water in the bucket, we will poor that water into the sink. The opening of the drain will need to be wide enough to let exactly 1 gallon of water through its opening in 60 second. Anything less will result in stuttered playback of the video.

Therefore, “bandwidth” is simply storage size divided by the total run time (TRT). For example, let’s say 10 people want to simultaneously watch a 7.5 MB (storage size), 60 second video (TRT). One thing to note is the difference between Megabyte (MB) and Megabit (bit). Storage is usually expressed in Bytes, and bandwidth is usually expressed in bits per second (bps). Note the use of lower case and upper case letter “b.” Also, there are 8 bits in one Byte.

Here’s the math for our example:

7.5 MB (total file size) ÷ 60 seconds (TRT) = 0.125 MBps X 8 (there are 8 bits in one Byte) = 1 Mbps (bandwidth)

1 Mbps is the “bandwidth” of the video. If 10 people simultaneously watch the video, you will need 1 Mbps X 10 people = 10 Mbps worth of available bandwidth for all 10 people to watch the video without stuttered playback. If we convert this to water in the sink, we would have 7.5 MB (file size) X 10 = 75 MB worth of water in the sink. The drain opening would need to be sized to allow 10 Mb of water through the drain per second (or 10 Mbps). This would allow all 75 MB worth of water to flow through the drain in exactly 60 seconds.

Your video asset management system may have enough storage to keep every video asset you have, but do you have enough bandwidth to facilitate the number of viewers you may have?

DEAR DR. DAM:  My name is Jackie and I’m a “Jack of all Trades-Master of None” one person marketing team for a large energy corporation.  I handle it all – marketing, communications and PR – but, with the help of several key outsourced providers and partners.  Since I handle all of our business branding and promotional materials, I deal with a large amount of digital media.  We have hundreds of files … mostly images, videos and brochures … used for ad campaigns, websites, mail inserts, presentations and investor materials. 

We pay a lot of money for photography and videography but this digital content seems to always have a way of disappearing after only one or two uses.  It’s like “poof” and it’s gone.  Different departments throughout the company have no idea what other departments have.   We are constantly recreating old stuff instead of repurposing existing work or creating new stuff.  It’s definitely becoming very frustrating and seems like we’re missing out on a lot of opportunity.  It’s hard to realize any marketing ROI if we can’t realize the full value of our assets.  I attempted to implement a DAM system about 6 years ago, but didn’t have the time to dedicate to a project like this and the project got pushed to the back-burner.  Now it’s time… point me in the right direction Dr. DAM.

DEAR JACKIE OF ALL TRADES:  I like that you’re able to rely on an outsourced team of experts that are just a phone call away.  It makes you look like a star and you have the best help available.  As a hosted digital asset management provider, Widen has proven that for over a decade and sounds like it’s time for you to “phone a friend.”  With centralized digital asset storage for all your photos, videos, Flash animations, illustrations, brochures, logos, and press clippings you won’t have assets slipping through the cracks or vanishing on you.  With administrative access controls, you can open up the digital asset library up to nearly all 5,000 internal employees as well as external partners while maintaining control with sophisticated digital asset tracking tools.

Don’t be overwhelmed… This project is something you can handle on your own and with the help of the right DAM SaaS vendor.  SaaS vendors like Widen have entire teams of project managers and implementation consultants that walk you through everything from best practices to training and help desk support.  Plus, automatic upgrades future proof your marketing resources from going extinct.  Best of all, I.T. will continue to support the business operations and  you can stay on top of everything marketing operations while you get to be a little more savvy with marketing software.  Need to quantify the time and money on DAM activities, check out the ROI Calculator from http://digitalassetmanagement.com.

“Spending Freeze,” “Cut Budgets,” “No New Spending.”  I hear these phrases on a daily basis.  I agree with you, times are tough and money is tight, but are you just going to stop marketing and creating files?  I want to meet the company that during a recession completely stops marketing and see how they come out.  I know you’re committed to your company and its financial stability, and so are we. Right now you need to be marketing harder but more efficiently. You need to cut costs so reallocate and spend wiser.

This line of thinking always baffles me when people are evaluating an installed software solution.  This “old school” approach was appropriate for the past, but has to have a huge justification in this new economy.  The costs are enormous compared to SaaS models.  Take the high cost of hardware, personnel to run it, third party updates and maintenance, massive storage consumption of video (hottest tool in marketing right now)… I don’t want to see that bill!  Then to top it off it’s an 8-12 month implementation?  To anyone who knows the evolution of software, also knows how out of date that “new” software is now. (4 upgrades a year with Widen at no extra cost of course.)

Hosted digital asset management software models are the new way of managing and distributing the rich media that is the lifeblood of your marketing and sales efforts.  Installed solutions are still trying to hold on to that age-old defense of web-based security and ownership.  You still own your assets, and the security is just as good, if not better.  This is why you are seeing all the major players in the DAM installed software side rolling out hosted solutions.  SaaS, cloud computing, digital asset management, social media... these are the terms of now!

My blogs have by called “fluffy” by co-workers … ironically by those who aren’t expected to blog.  Anyway be prepared for another fluffy blog … this time about throwing snow balls, the Polar Bear Plunge, and digital asset management. 

Chris Norris, Lead Developer at Widen Enterprises, is our resident renaissance man.  Developer.  Photographer.  Videographer.  Charity Supporter.  DAM user.  When he’s not slaving away on JAVA code at Widen, he’s shooting cool photographs around town and making the occasional video.  But he never truly escapes his job at Widen as he uses the Widen Media Collective for his personal photography and videos.  Take for example the latest video he shot detailing the extensive training he underwent preparing for the Polar Bear Plunge.  In case you haven’t heard of it, the Polar Bear Plunge involves hardy souls like Chris – jumping into the ridiculously icy waters of Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin to raise money for Special Olympics.  (for those of you in more temperate climates – it was minus 5 degrees Fahrenheit on my drive to work today)  To really show people what it takes to prepare for an event like this, Chris created this “training” video (and this is where many, many snowballs come into play). 
 

Now to bring all this together ... snowballs, Polar Bear Plunge, and DAM … After he finished his raw video, he uploaded it into Widen’s hosted digital asset management software.  What makes software as service sweet is the ability to access it wherever you may be … all you need is an internet connection.  So you don’t need to be tied to your desk at work hooking up with your company network  … you can be sitting on your couch at home watching Star Trek and uploading your raw video (showing people pelting you with snow balls) and your still shots to the media asset storage system any time day or night.  Once the uncut video footage was uploaded, Chris sent an order to his video editor in Portland, Oregon.  He didn’t have to worry about a huge file like this getting caught up in spam filters because his editor receives an email with a link (no attachment!) that goes to a pickup page where she can download the file.  Once the video is edited and complete, Chris gave his editor upload privileges and the finished video was uploaded to Widen’s video asset management application.  Chris (or anyone Chris decides to give privileges to) can login and view the video within our video hosting provider service without even having to download it.  And the other cool part is how Chris used embed links to transfer the video to different websites.  Instead of manually putting that video on 5 different websites, he used an embed link on those pages so every time a page loads that contains the video embed link the data is transferred from the Widen DAM to the various websites.  If Chris decides to update the video – all he has to do is upload the new video into DAM and – viola – all the websites that have that video via embed links are automatically updated with new video!  One change versus five!

So, one more fluffy blog post.  How many more left to go?

Matthew, Al and I had a call with a DAM analyst from Gartner yesterday – those DAM analyst you know… they're always on to something new!  We enjoyed sharing the ‘ole Widen update about our direction with video asset management, cloud computing, creating a more enjoyable user experience and appliance expansion among other top R&D initiatives for 2009. 

But then we got into the juicy stuff affecting marketing operations in 2009.  The type of marketing operations dealing with tight budgets, a change in spend and shift away from traditional ad mediums. 

Then the conversation shifted to YouTube.  (My favorite online hobby).  No doubt, YouTube, social media and the demand for rich media is changing the attitudes and behaviors of the workforce, marketing strategies and the corresponding demands on I.T.  It’s an exciting time to be in this industry!  What are your corporate governance policies on YouTube as a purposeful messaging medium?  Please share!

Our stance on YouTube is that it is an excellent destination site for video and serves the purpose for socializing and democratizing video content by providing a community for “like” videos.  However, it’s digital asset management tools that take the pain out of having to manage and repurpose video and other rich media content.  As Gartner has predicted, more than 25 percent of enterprise content will be images, audio and video by 2013.  How will organizations manage this content?  The simple answer is DAM.  In a tough economy, the more exact answer is DAM SaaS.  Hence, the reasons why we’re investing so much R&D efforts on embed links and cloud computing resources for offsite media storage.

Digital asset embed links allow marketers (who are shifting more toward online mediums) to repurpose images and video across all online channels while controlling their brand by maintaining the master file in one central repository.  Cloud computing allows us to offer our DAM SaaS solutions with on-demand scalability, while you budget for what you use.  As many of the analysts have stated, SaaS has the lowest penetration rate, but highest growth rates.  There are several (several may be stretching it) hosted digital asset management tools out there, but only one mid-market DAM company can claim the longevity and an evolving 60-year understanding in the makeup of digital assets.  Ok, Al Gore, we didn’t "invent" or "create" digital assets 60 years ago, but Widen was there...

Co-authors of the CMS Watch Digital & Media Asset Management Report, Theresa Regli and Kas Thomas, recently provided a great article to AIIM (The Enterprise Content Management Association) Infonomics, which helps technology professionals and business leaders alike understand the main differences between digital asset management (DAM) and web content management (WCM) systems. Additionally, the article defines several use cases for needing a DAM system. 

Here’s a summary of the article. 

Some confusion between DAM / WCM stems from WCM and enterprise content management (ECM) vendors promoting their products as DAM tools.  The truth is that most WCM vendors only offer a generic repository for binary files.  For those dealing with large amounts of rich media (images, audio/video, etc.), DAM tools are much more specialized to fit. 

In DAM, a piece of content becomes an asset when it’s been classified, indexed, versioned, secured, stored, reformatted, etc.  Digital assets are only valuable if they can be found and reused.  The key to search-ability is metadata.  Metadata is either automatically extracted (XMP, for example) or manually associated to assets. 

Established DAM vendors tend to be older than most WCM vendors.  Plus, DAM vendors have a broader understanding of the demands for scalability, storage and bandwidth in managing content.  DAM systems store files in a file system and the associated metadata is stored in a relational database.  Most WCM solutions (and light weight ECM tools, like SharePoint) store all content in a database, which generally doesn’t work for large rich media files.  According to the CMS Watch findings, metadata matters most in DAM more than any other content management technology.  Another unique feature offered by digital asset solutions not found in WCM solutions includes transforming and transcoding.  For example, converting a Windows Media File to a QuickTime or Flash Video file on the fly.  (The same goes for images.)  Other key features to DAM solutions include versioning, access controls via roles and permissions, navigation/search, review/collaboration and defining relationships between assets. 

Adopters of DAM systems include companies in manufacturing, retail, hospitality, consumer products, national/global brands, ad agencies and broadcasting. 

A few of the DAM system use cases listed in the article include:

• DAM Library or Photo Archive
• Brand Management
• Marketing Asset Production and Distribution
• Ad Production
• Catalog Production
• Short Form Video Production
• Broadcast Video Production

A complete list of common scenarios can be found in the CMS Watch Digital & Media Asset Management Report

1. Saves time searching for assets – you know where they are, don’t you?  I bet the last person that asked for it doesn’t?  It’s in the media asset storage library thingy. 

2. Saves time converting assets – RGB at 72 dpi and CMYK at 300 I get, but 512 Kbps constant bit rate double pass, 30fps, 1 keyframe per second is a little out of my league.  Automate the digital media conversion. 

3. Saves time distributing assets – burn it, pack it, ship it.  It gives me reason to get more coffee and make friends with the UPS guy.  Alex, what is digital asset management?

4. Saves time tracking versions – would that be the 3rd or the 33rd version?  It get’s even more fun when you’re not in the same building as the other designers.  

5. Saves time chasing approvals – did someone say duck, duck goose?  Office games are fun, right?  

6. Saves time enforcing rights – no one wants a legal matter on their hands.  That’s a whole other monster.  

7. Saves time reworking lost files – that’s a surefire way to get on the designer’s bad side.  Keep it safe in the digital asset library.

8. Saves time starting over on new projects – everyone likes a shortcut. 

9. Saves time from interruptions to your workflow – a productive workplace is a happy workplace.

10. Saves time brainstorming ways to be more efficient – trust the experts to help you with that.

How much is your time worth? 

DEAR DR. DAM:  I’m Herald, the IT Director for a state-of-the-art video content distribution company for advertisers and program creators.  We offer full post production services with expertise in both standard definition and HD. We provide broadcast distribution to all national and international outlets for television and radio.  We have in-house post production capabilities, multiple electronic distribution networks, satellite delivery and tape dubs.  We offer all formats and international standards in HD, NTSC, PAL and SECAM.  We have same day HD spot dub and shipping available at no extra cost.  We have offices both east coast and west coast.  We operate our facilities 24 hours a day, six days a week.  We have clients from around the world including major networks and studios, cable programmers, television producers, advertising agencies, commercial production companies, and corporate communication organizations, among many others.  That’s enough about us.
 
We want to provide a digital media distribution service for various clients.  We’re looking at a hosted digital asset management system entirely for video at this time, although there may be some additional images and documents added later.  Our use could easily surpass 10-15 TB of storage or more and want to verify over the coming three months that a hosted DAM system will serve our purposes. 

DEAR HI-DEMAND HD HERALD:  I can tell you that your volume of data with video would in most cases give a hosted digital asset management system a heck of a work-out.  Luckily, Widen can handle your current needs and offer you on-demand scalability for your infrastructure needs based on exactly that—only what you need, when you need it.  Leveraging the power of the cloud, Widen is one of the few DAM vendors that allow you to take advantage of true software-as-a-service in terms of technology and service.  Your video distribution demands are in good hands with Widen.  Plus, you’re senior management will appreciate the pay for what you use model to meet the peaks and valleys of the demand.  Your internal resources will also be used more efficiently.  Top it off with the flexibility you have to “try it out.”  Go big or go home as they like to say…

DEAR DR. DAM:  I want a hosted digital asset management solution and I want it now.  Sorry, for my candid nature, but I’m Raymundo, the web marketing manager for a mid-size sporting goods manufacturer.  We don’t have an I.T. department that can support such a system, nor can they fully support our marketing efforts.  Our digital files are stored in multiple locations within a file folder structure with no associated metadata.  Our users will require something that is easy to use (i.e. functionally fit) as they will not put up with a system loaded with confusion.  My main focus needs to offer global access to our assets, while enforcing brand consistency.  With that said, varying roles and appropriate permissions are key.  For our retailers and print partners, we’re building an online digital asset management warehouse to download approved files for their advertising, and also to use as an FTP for printers doing outsourced work on our catalogs.  We’ve recognized that there are many types of DAM systems—ranging from light, medium, and heavy.  We do one catalog per year per brand and have a handful of brands under the chief brand.  We have a few dozen sales and marketing people on our staff serving a couple hundred dealers. 

The FTP site does not work well for dealers and we’re doing away with the dealer extranet.  Since we’re revamping our web site, we want to replace the dealer extranet with a hosted DAM solution that will also replace the FTP site.  Some dealers have their own catalogs so once a year they will do a complete download of the entire product line.  Therefore, we obviously have a decent amount of volume when it comes to usage.  We also have a few different printers and advertising agencies, so the DAM system would serve as hub for all levels.  Our file types include product and lifestyle photography, PDF fact sheets, word docs and spreadsheets.  We have some templates for dealer promotions so a web-to-print type of collateral customization tool would be helpful in streamlining the creation of branded materials.  We need our DAM system in place before we launch the new website. 

DEAR BAM HUB RAYMUNDO:  You are facing quite an endeavor.  Your situation sounds complicated, but it’s a pretty average situation for many marketers your size and a mid-sized brand asset management software solution that can scale to meet your needs is well within reach.  You’ll be able to condense your need for different internal resources by doing away with the hard drive storage and FTP usage.  Your DAM system will serve as the graphic communications hub for internal marketing and sales, advertising agencies, printers and your dealer network.  Establishing metadata taxonomies and adhering to those standards will be imperative to the success of the system.  Widen can help you with that by sharing best practices in what others have done from the Widen user community.  Your marketing people should like what the dynamic media building tool can do for your dealers by allowing them to customize ads, brochures and other promotional sales collateral within branding standards.  Hang in there… Widen will help you move along quickly, but in manageable chunks.