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INTRODUCTION
At CMS Watch, we recently conducted a 6-month research project, which is ongoing, critically evaluating 20 digital asset management (DAM) tools and looking at the overall DAM market. Because we take a Consumer Reports -style approach, carrying out extensive interviews with users of the software products, we were able to gain deep insight into how well DAM software is meeting the everyday needs of businesses.
DAM technology has made significant strides in maturity, but it remains a highly fragmented and specialized industry, where many customers are forsaking 'name' players in favor of niche or hosted solutions. DAM vendors generally 'grew up' specializing in a specific area, be it photo library services (useful for museums and traditional publishers), brand asset management (for managing graphics and other brand collateral) or video management/management of time-based assets (vital for broadcasters). Many buyers of DAM technology pick their vendor based on their area of specialization, and rightly so, as few vendors perform very well in more than one or two scenarios.
It soon became clear to us that a critical evaluation of the DAM market had never really been conducted before. When we first approached vendors about participation, we were often asked how much we 'charged' in order to be a part of the report. But our goal was not to create a piece of marketing fluff or partake in payola; rather, we wanted to provide a truly objective analysis based on customer experience.
We interviewed over 100 users of DAM products and reported their real experience with each system and company. We worked with several DAM industry veterans who informed our analysis, and most vendors were shocked (and sometimes horrified) by our evaluations, simply because it is so clear that many DAM system users, and implementers of enterprise DAM, are not getting their needs met by today's DAM solutions. In fact, getting to the end point of successful enterprise DAM involves a heavy amount of work in the area of DAM operations and BPM, and DAM software is really only a small part of the picture.
THE DAM MARKETPLACE AND VENDORS
We break up the marketplace into three tiers, roughly from those that are more complex and appropriate for enterprise-scale implementations, to those that are simpler and...