Digital Asset Management Whitepaper by KeyFruit Inc.

STOP!
E-mail Attachments Mania, Dinosaur FTP Process’, Hard
Disk/Flash Disk and Mobile Disk Crashes, Security and
Collaboration Problems, Multi Device Incompatibilities (PC,
Mac, iPhone, Blackberry, PDAs), Constraints of Workplace and
specially Loss in Your Digital Units of Work

Work freely with your filesf

Meet DAM*
*Digital Asset Management

KeyFruit Inc.

Abstract:
This whitepaper talks about Digital Asset Management systems, their benefits, the trends in storage
capacity and content creation. The paper describes what, as users, we consider as the digital universe, how
big it is and how big scientists estimate it to become in the near future. It gives a detailed description of
what constitutes a DAM system and its benefits in a world where the gap between content created by
computer users and digital storage is exponentially increasing. The paper goes on to investigate the
market for Digital Asset Management systems and compares enterprise level systems with software as a
service (SaaS) systems. Finally the paper is concluded with how the return on investment of a Digital Asset
Management system is measured.

KeyFruit Inc. P a g e |2

Table of Contents
1. What is Digital Universe? ..................................................................................................................................... 5
a. Information Overload ........................................................................................................................................ 5
b. Yin, Yang .............................................................................................................................................................. 5
c. Storage Gods are Hungry ................................................................................................................................. 6
2. Definition of a “Digital Asset” .............................................................................................................................. 6
3. Content ≠ Digital Asset ......................................................................................................................................... 7
4. Types of Digital Assets .......................................................................................................................................... 9
5. What are Common Digital Asset Delivery Methods? ...................................................................................... 10
a. Understanding FTPs ....................................................................................................................................... 10
b. Instant Messaging ........................................................................................................................................... 11
c. E-mail Attachments ........................................................................................................................................ 12
d. Physical Media ................................................................................................................................................. 12
e. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 13
6. What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)? ..................................................................................................... 13
a. Overview............................................................................................................................................................ 13
b. Definition........................................................................................................................................................... 13
c. Users of DAM ................................................................................................................................................... 14
d. Trends ............................................................................................................................................................... 14
e. The Industrial Kaleidoscope .......................................................................................................................... 15
f. Key Business Drivers for DAM Need in Business Functions .................................................................... 16
g. Market Status and Forecasts......................................................................................................................... 17
7. DAM Global Market Status ................................................................................................................................. 18
a. Competitive Ecosphere ................................................................................................................................... 18
b. Significant Vendors and Important Acquisitions ......................................................................................... 19
c. Core Competencies (Benefits of DAM) ......................................................................................................... 21
d. Opportunities and Forecast............................................................................................................................ 22
e. Key Future Competitive Factors .................................................................................................................... 24
8. DAM Solution for Business ................................................................................................................................ 24


a. DAM Solution for Marketing........................................................................................................................... 24
b. Embracing Marketing Operation: What’s in it for DAM professionals? ................................................... 25
c. How does DAM Help Marketing Through its “Evolution”? ......................................................................... 25
d. What is Mobile DAM? ...................................................................................................................................... 26
9. DAM’s ROI ............................................................................................................................................................. 27
a. DAM – Hard-Dollar ROI .................................................................................................................................. 28
b. DAM – Soft-Dollar ROI .................................................................................................................................... 31
10. Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................................ 32
Works Cited .................................................................................................................................................................. 34
Appendix A .................................................................................................................................................................... 35


1. What is Digital Universe?

Contemplating the digital universe is a little like contemplating Avogadro’s number. It’s big. Bigger than
anything we can touch, feel, or see, and thus impossible to understand in context. For the purists,
Avogadro’s number — “the number of `elementary entities` (usually atoms or molecules) in one mole, that
is (from the definition of the mole), the number of atoms in exactly 12 grams of carbon-12” 1 and is
6.022x1023 (602,200,000,000,000,000,000,000). And no, the digital universe is not that big. In 2007, the
number of “atoms” in the digital universe — the digital bits, or binary 1s and 0s created, captured, and
replicated during the year — was less than a hundredth of Avogadro’s number.

But the number of digital “atoms” in the digital universe is already bigger than the number of stars in the
universe. And, because the digital universe is expanding by a factor of 10 every five years, in 15 years it will
surpass Avogadro’s number. But the size and explosive growth of the digital universe are only two of its
characteristics. Like our own physical universe, it is also incredibly diverse, has hotspots, and is subject to
mysterious unseen forces. It seems to have its own laws of physics.

a. Information Overload

While the devices and applications that create or capture digital information are growing rapidly, so are
the devices that store information. Information creation and available storage are the yin and yang of
the digital universe. Cheaper storage allows us to take high-resolution photos on our cell phones,
which in turn drives demand for more storage. Higher-capacity drives allow us to replicate more
information, which drives growth of content.

b. Yin, Yang

In 2007, according to IDC estimates, all the empty or usable space on hard drives, tapes, CDs, DVDs,
and memory (volatile and nonvolatile) in the market equaled 264 exabytes* — very close to the total
amount of information created or
captured (see Figure 1). From here
on, the two numbers diverge.

How to interpret this gap? Surely not
all information created is important
enough to store for any length of
time, is it? Correct. A good portion of
the digital universe is transient —
radio and TV broadcasts that are
listened to but not recorded, voice
call packets that are not needed
when the call is over, and images
Figure 1
1
(International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry)
* See Appendix A for storage terminology


captured for a time then written over on a surveillance camera recorder. But this is our first time in the
situation where we couldn’t store all the information we create even if we wanted to. This mismatch
between creation and storage, plus increasing regulatory requirements for information retention, will
put pressure on those responsible for developing strategies for storing, retaining, and purging
information on a regular basis.

c. Storage Gods are Hungry

In 2007, IDC forecasted that 1,082 exabytes of storage would ship during the years 2007 through 2010.
In 2008, however, it increased the estimate for the same time period by nearly 10%, or almost 90
exabytes and tied it to three main reasons. 2

Protection of personal information: The segment of storage consumption most underestimated by
IDC early in 2007 was that for personal data protection. Worldwide shipments of personal storage
devices, a.k.a. external hard disk drives, exceeded all expectations in 2007. By 2011, personal
storage devices are expected to consume more hard drive terabytes than all other segments except
desktop PCs. As consumers generate more and more of the world’s digital content, they are finally
coming to understand the need to preserve their information heirlooms.

Mobility: Increasingly, we carry our storage with us — in laptop PCs, mobile phones, iPods, PDAs,
global positioning systems, games, and other computer electronics. Solid state storage in the form
of flash memory is being driven into a broad spectrum of computing devices. And although flash
memory represents a small percentage of overall storage capacity shipped — 1% in 2007
increasing to 5% in 2011 — IDS’s new forecast represents a cumulative 43% increase over the years
2007–2010 from the initial forecast last year.

The side effect of storage on the go: Mobile phones, global positioning systems, PDAs, and other
devices integrate local storage, but they also require access to networked storage across an
increasingly connected world. This is one of the reasons enterprises are seeing their storage
requirements increase 50% per year.

2. Definition of a “Digital Asset”

A digital asset is any form of content and/or media that have been formatted into a binary source which
include the right to use it. A digital file without the right to use it is not an asset. Digital assets are
categorized in three major groups which may be defined as textual content (digital assets), images (media
assets) and multimedia (media assets) 3

Digital assets represent a new class of financial assets. In most cases, the firm paid one or more
knowledge workers to create them, representing significant labor and overhead expenses.

Digital assets are comprised of various file types including, but not limited to, the following: product
images, lifestyle photography, audio & video formats, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Auto CAD, Quark,
2
(Gantz, Chute and Manfrediz)
3
(van Niekerk)


Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, In-Design, PDF, and various other file formats. Some firms have begun
to capitalize this expense, creating new entries on corporate balance sheets. As the name also suggests, a
digital asset constitutes a unit of work that exists in digital form. This characteristic alone gives it several
unique properties.

First, its value does not decrease with its use. Paradoxically, the value of many digital assets (corporate
logos) increases with higher use.

Second, you can store a digital file on just about any mass-storage device. This high mobility allows almost
instant movement for virtually no cost.

Third, many firms find these digital files reusable as is or with only slight modification. This reuse saves a
considerable amount of time otherwise spent re-creating existing objects and reduces new errors or
distortions that the re-creation might introduce.

Fourth, many designers build complex and sophisticated digital objects from hundreds or thousands of
highly modular digital building blocks. This modular approach enables designers and others to quickly
exchange various parts and create myriad new forms consistent in look and feel with the originals. This
practice not only enhances creative expression, it also dramatically reduces cost and time to market for
those expressions.

3. Content ≠ Digital Asset

Nearly 40 years ago, Marshall McLuhan coined the term content as it relates to media. In his seminal book,
Understanding Media, he argues persuasively that the context or medium that transmits media to
consumers has a much greater impact on the individual and society than does the subject (content) matter
itself. McLuhan demonstrates that when one attempts to reuse material by placing it in a new context or
medium, something vital gets lost. For example, when TV first emerged, some networks tried to televise
theatrical plays, a practice that produced incredibly bad TV shows. To memorialize the disastrous
consequence of “repurposing” media in ways that the creators did not intend, McLuhan used the term
content. Content—as a term that connotes a business strategy and an economic context—often represents
the significant abuse of creative material. 4

Content represents the denuding of creative expression, the deletion of data from a digital file in a way that
renders it useless for all but a single-purpose deployment. Nevertheless, content management (CM) has
emerged as a significant market category for medium to large enterprises. Essentially, content
management entails the tracking, distribution, and control of “dead” digital files that have little or no
subsequent reuse potential. The figure below depicts two important dimensions that distinguish data asset
management from CM.

4
(McLuhan)


Figure 2

First, content has a very short lifespan. GISTICS’ research indicates that the lifecycle for single-purpose-
built content averages less than seven weeks. Digital assets, on the other hand, have a reuse lifespan
exceeding 18 months.

Second, content has a very low, if not nonexistent, potential for reuse or re-expression (a creative
reinterpretation or authoring). This decreased potential reflects the fact that someone deleted critical data
from the digital original, often requiring the artist
or designer to start over to replicate the “lost”
original. Work products represent interim
expressions of a digital file or variations on a
creative theme. While these work products may not
enjoy a long lifespan, they often represent
extensions or enhancements of a brand image,
indicating the need to track and control them for
proper use throughout an enterprise (see Figure 3).
Digital masters represent a type of digital asset
created by someone who took great care to ensure
the highest level of reuse and re-expression. A
digital master may contain sufficient data to
produce dozens or hundreds of individual Figure 3
expressions of a single theme.

Most content management systems do not manage high-resolution source files for systematic reuse
across multiple formats and media. Rather, content management systems deal with fixed, final-form
renditions that, often, a Web content specialist produced using costly manual or semi automated
techniques. On average, DAM delivers a $74 cost savings each time a firm reuses or re-expresses a


preexisting digital media file. Each instance of reuse also represents an average time-to-market gain of 48
minutes.

4. Types of Digital Assets

Digital assets are comprised of various file types including, but not limited to, the following: product
images, lifestyle photography, audio & video formats, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Auto CAD, Quark,
Photoshop, Illustrator, PageMaker, In-Design, PDF, and various other file formats (Figure 4).

Asset type Description Sources Units of work
• Database-served
Subject-matter experts, teachers,
– W Web pages, JITIT documents,
and communities of practice or
Online courseware optimized for the PDF
expertise; lectures, courseware,
connative and cognitive abilities of • Streaming media
Education classroom discussions, probe-
individual students; often represents -Audio, video, animation
Assets further links and references, lab
compound media and knowledge • Shared objects
notes, footnotes, annotated
objects 2D/3D models, maps, visualizations
bibliographies, interviews, audio and
• Discussion
video recordings of performances
- Teleconference, postings, live chat
•Customer records
-Transactions, interactions
•Product data
Rows and columns of structured -Sales histories, forecasts, pricing,
Production data systems of record,
Information data conditioned and engineered for inventories
data warehouses, and database
Assets secure presentation through a • Management information
information services
browser -Budgets, financial statements
• Brand resources
-Subscriptions, traffic, dwell-time
interactions
Tangible and intangible assets
including computing and
• Metadata
communications equipment,
MIS/ITIT departments of the firm as • Installed and configured hardware
installed software, capitalized
IT Assets well as ASPs/MSPs or co-located or software
professional services, systems and
equipment • Promised/guaranteed service-
software configurations, warranty
level agreements
coverage, and business-continuity
services
• Digital formats
– CACAD files
– e-Docs, PDFs
– E-mail, WPWP files
– Scanned images
– Slide presentation files
Collections of unstructured data in
Knowledge workers throughout the – Spreadsheets
Knowledge digital formats (binary large objects,
firm and its value chain of suppliers, – Web pages, interfaces
Assets BLOBs) and physical formats
distributors, and affiliates • Physical formats
(mechanical devices, models, props)
– Artwork, artifacts
– Business records
– Letters, faxes
– Maps, drawings
– Movies, stills, film
– Props, costumes
Components used in brand • Ads
Designers, producers, authors, and
resources (ads, brochures, Web – Online, Broadcast, Print
developers of print, broadcast,
Media Assets sites), publications, and • CD, DVD, cassettes
online, and media-based products or
entertainment products (music, • Documents, publications
services
voice, video) – Online, e-Distributed, Print, e-Print
Figure 4


5. What are Common Digital Asset Delivery Methods?

Companies with large data sets continue to use physical methods, recording to DVD, Flash, or HDDs and
using a delivery service. This works on an ad-hoc basis but can lead to high costs.

Standard digital alternatives include e-mail or instant messaging services, but these have issues including
file size limitations or reliance on the same TCP/IP backbone causing FTP to fail.

Digital delivery is still the ultimate solution for most enterprises. However, a solution should overcome the
stoppages and slowdowns common to FTP. It should allow organizations to maximize their existing
infrastructure, saving money that would otherwise have been wasted acquiring higher bandwidths. Finally,
it should be easy to implement and—more importantly—easy to use.

a. Understanding FTPs

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is one of the oldest protocols on the Internet, but is ubiquitous for file
transfer. FTP resulted from an RFC first drafted in the 1970s, and has since gone through relatively
few changes. FTP was designed to be completely agnostic—independent from operating systems,
file storage systems and file types.

Including transfer speed issues, there are other potential problems with FTP:

Learning Curve: The average end-user is not familiar with FTP clients.

Firewall and Security: Not all IT networks allow for unrestricted FTP access; some users
may not be able to connect to the FTP server.

FTP Administration: IT administrators have to manage end
-users o n the FTP server and
provide support and maintenance to the FTP server.

TCP/IP Performance: Poorly
-performing networks compromise transfer speed and
encumber an organization’s workflow.

FTP runs on TCP/IP protocol, using two TCP connections. The first is a control channel used to
exchange instructions, and is always open. The other is a data channel, used for file transfer and
directory listings. The channel is opened or closed as needed.

TCP/IP is the most widely deployed protocol on the internet; consequently, FTP is the de facto
standard for file transfer. However, it also inherits the drawbacks of TCP.

Latency and its effect on FTP

In order to provide reliable data transmission, TCP/IP requires the receiver to acknowledge
each packet being sent, in sequential order. Each such communication is measured as
round trip time (RTT), or the time it takes for a packet to be sent and acknowledged.

KeyFruit Inc. P a g e | 10

TCP responds to latency by adjusting the amount of unacknowledged data that can be on the
link before waiting for a reply. The optimal amount of unacknowledged data en route should
equal the end-to-end bandwidth multiplied by the RTT, also called the bandwidth-delay
product. TCP continually estimates this value, setting a “TCP window” to control how much
data should be sent. TCP has limits on the size of this value, so when the bandwidth
-delay
product exceeds a certain threshold, the result is a lot of waiting or “dead air”. Satellite
connections can be into the hundreds or even thousands of milliseconds of RTT.

Packet loss and its effect on FTP

Network congestion typically causes buffer overflows of intermediate routers, causing
packet loss. Since packets are sent sequentially, this can cause a hold -up in the cycle.

Unacknowledged packets also
cause the TCP window to shrink or
even close completely for periods
of time. Wireless and satellite
transfers can have even higher
packet loss due to sources of
interference such as clouds or
physical structures. Packet loss
combined with high latency
creates even worse performance
for FTP transfers.

Figure 5

b. Instant Messaging

According to PC World, Instant Messaging has become the most common form of electronic
communications, surpassing e-mail. There are some issues to be aware of:

Interoperability: Although different IM clients are often able to share text messages with
one another, file transfer is not usually possible between different clients.

Security: Popular IM clients continue to be targets for trojans and exploits. Transmissions
are not usually over secure channels.

No Tracking: Transferring files over IM makes it difficult or impossible to track files moving
between different endpoints.

Poor Network Utilization: TCP/IP is typically used as the transport layer. The same network
issues facing FTP also face IM file transfer.


c. E-mail Attachments

E-mail is perhaps the most common method of sharing files others, both at work and at home.
However, there are some considerable limitations:

Reliability: E-mail servers are configured to handle attachments up to a certain size; usually
10 MB or less. Users cannot depend on their e-mail arriving without being “bounced” for
exceeding this limit.

Archival: E-mails are archived by the mail server. Attachments add to the storage
requirements of the mail server, increasing IT cost.

Poor Network Utilization: E-mail uses Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for transfers,
which is not the most efficient protocol to transfer large files over a network.

Figure 6

d. Physical Media

Organizations may record data to a DVD, hard drive, or flash storage, and then physically ship it to
the recipient. This process can be useful when there are huge data sets or when there is poor
connectivity between the two parties, but it has some obvious drawbacks:


Preparation Time: This process requires human interaction, from recording the data to
printing out mailing labels and shipping the media.

Cost: Depending on the urgency of the files, costs for using a courier service can easily add
up.

Delivery Time: Since physical delivery is involved, the process can take 1 to 5 business days.
This may be an unwelcome delay and makes time
-sensitive delivery an unreliable
proposition.

e. Conclusion

FTP servers are often set up by media and design agencies to share large files. Maintenance is
difficult and FTP suffers from TCP/IP drawbacks.

E-mail servers simply cannot handle large file transfers effectively or reliably. Archiving is
expensive.

Interoperability, TCP/IP drawbacks and security risks make IM less than ideal for enterprises.

Postproduction houses exchange terabytes of data by shipping physical media. This is labor-
intensive and expensive.

6. What is Digital Asset Management (DAM)?

a. Overview

Digital asset management, or DAM, is often 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 e-mail, documents, records, or scanned images. Creative agencies,
publishers, broadcasters and media outlets have long realized the wisdom of utilizing DAM
solutions in the production of their media assets including managing digital rights, conferring with
clients, handling review cycles, retouching images, and editing photos and videos. But until
recently, many other enterprises have relied on enterprise content management solutions or with
feature-limited, home-grown DAM tools to manage both documents and digital assets. 5

b. Definition

Digital Asset Management consists of tasks and decisions surrounding ingesting, annotating,
cataloguing, storage and retrieval of digital assets, such as digital photographs, animations, videos
and music. Digital asset management systems are computer software and/or hardware systems
that aid in the process of digital asset management.

5
(Kotob)


The term "digital asset management" (DAM) also refers to the protocol for downloading, renaming,
backing up, rating, grouping, archiving, optimizing, maintaining, thinning, and exporting files.
"There are two primary types of DAM software: browsers and cataloging software. A browser reads
information from a file but does not store it separately. Cataloging software stores information in
its own separate file, however, the software and the catalog document it makes are distinct from
the photos themselves.” 6

c. Users of DAM

USERS OF DIGITAL ASSETS

Content Creators Content Users Content-Consumers

 Agencies  Marketing  Distribution

 Graphic Designers  Sales  Press and Analysyts

 Photographers  Training  Public

 Publishing Group  Trade Partners

 Web Specialist

d. Trends

Briefly three clear trends are visible today:

Consumers and professionals continue to generate and interact with more digital content. This
takes the form of more complex files or presentations and it’s dramatically accentuated as people
move to use higher resolution cameras and larger music collections with increasing fidelity. More
recently we start to see an accelerated move to dealing with video generating large files, and
possibly having to keep multiple formats to be able to play them back in devices with different
playback capabilities.

The promise of wireless remote access finally arrived allowing people to have a very distributed
computing environment usually including multiple desktop computers at home, laptops for
mobility, netbooks for advanced mobility, and a large variety of mobile devices including smart and
feature phones. In addition the multiple devices, these environments are typically also cross
platform including Windows, Mac, and Linux on the desktop and a huge number of mobile operating
systems.

People care tremendously about their personal data and enjoy using it and sharing with friends and
family directly or via social networks. 10 years ago computers were mostly disconnected for a large
proportion of the population. Today everything is connected and various device gadgets (cameras,

6
(Krogh)


camcorders, flip cameras, mobile phones) and web sites (iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, etc.) allow
people to generate and collect a large number of digital assets. The significant time spent in
creating and editing these libraries and the emotional attachment to them makes it very critical for
people. They want to ensure that these libraries are well preserved and readily available for
personal consumption and for sharing with friends. Sharing can be done directly via e-mail and
associated links, and also indirectly via common social networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.)

e. The Industrial Kaleidoscope

Financial Services, an industry synonymous with number crunching. Some of the most advanced
computing takes place at brokerages, and some of the most meticulous record keeping occurs at
insurance companies. Transactions involving trillions of dollars a day — equal to the world's annual
gross economic output — are logged deep in the banking systems’ computers. This is one of the
reasons an industry that generated 6% of worldwide gross output buys 20% of the world’s
computers. Yet for all this information processing, the financial services industry accounts for just
6% of the digital universe today and will fall to 3% by 2011. There is simply not enough imaging
going on.

On the other hand, there are the broadcast, media, and entertainment industries, which garner
about 4% of the world’s revenues but which already generate, manage, or otherwise oversee 50% of
the digital universe. Within 10 years, when most countries are broadcasting digital TV and most
movies are digital, that percentage will be even higher.

The Manufacturing Industry is rapidly deploying digital surveillance cameras on the one hand and
sensor-based systems and RFID tracking on the other, not to mention using a lot of CAD/CAM and
visualization.

The Retail/Wholesale Industry, here coupled with the transportation industry, is another major
implementer of video surveillance and RFID tags. In addition, the rapid growth of customer
information systems is swelling corporate databases. Wal-Mart, which now refreshes its customer
databases hourly, adds a billion rows of new data an hour to a data warehouse that is 600 terabytes
and growing.

The Utility Industry is talking about transforming the electricity distribution system into an
“intelligent grid,” with millions — perhaps billions — of sensors in the distribution system and at
the meter level, broadband information transfer along power lines, and databases and active
analytics to make system adjustments on the fly.

Government and Healthcare Sectors are both heavily invested in imaging — surveillance and
mapping in government, medical imaging and record archiving in healthcare. In healthcare,
imaging databases are growing for two reasons; growth of images per year (more patients, more
scans) and conversions of archived film images. A large hospital might now has a petabyte-scale
database of stored images and be adding to it as many as three terabytes a week.


The Oil and Gas Industry has been developing what’s known as the “digital oilfield,” where sensors
monitoring activity at the point of exploration and the wellhead connect to information systems at
headquarters and drive operational and exploration decisions in real time. Chevron has reported
that it accumulates data at the rate of two terabytes a day. The raw geological data set for an oil
field might be 200 terabytes.

There are also unique pockets of the digital universe worthy of note that can be tied to single
entities. YouTube’s 100 million video streams a day account for almost as much of the digital
universe as all of medical imaging. The U.S. government’s Center for Earth Resources Observation
and Science has archives of three petabytes — mostly aerial photography and satellite images —
and is growing at two terabytes a day. Library and archive digitization efforts, although small in the
scheme of the entire digital universe, are steadily adding terabytes a day to the digital universe.
Then there is the new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear
Research in Switzerland. When it runs an experiment, a system of sensors laid out in a plane the
size of a swimming pool will gather data from four detectors at half a petabyte per second each,
filter out most of the signals, then stream them at terabytes per second to an information grid. Just
one experiment, the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), will receive incoming compressed data at 40
terabytes per second and store a megabyte per second. The experiment is expected to run 100 days
a year, 24 hours a day. That’s more than 300 exabytes of incoming data per year! The LHC will
create a digital universe unto itself!

f. Key Business Drivers for DAM Need in Business Functions

To deal with this explosion of the digital universe in size and complexity, IT organizations will face
three main imperatives:

- They will need to transform their existing relationships with the business units. It will take
all competent hands in an organization to deal with information creation, storage,
management, security, retention, and disposal in an enterprise. Dealing with the digital
universe is not a technical problem alone.

- They will need to spearhead the development of organization wide policies for information
governance: information security, information retention, data access, and compliance.

- They will need to rush new tools and standards into the organization, from storage
optimization, unstructured data search, and database analytics to resource pooling
(virtualization) and management and security tools. All will be required to make the
information infrastructure as flexible, adaptable, and scalable as possible.

Therefore we can group those three imperative into another three drivers:

Need for:
- Extensive Control and Flexibility
- Global Access


- Digital Asset Warehouse
- The collaboration tool

Collaboration Tool Quest for:
- Collective Rich Media Production, Review and Distribution

Solution for:
- Inadequate common file delivery methods
- Security skepticism against working online with digital assets
- High IT infrastructure and training expenditures
- An end-to-end digital media supply chain that supports the creation, integration,
repurposing and distribution of digital assets

g. Market Status and Forecasts

Is there a Market for DAM?

Though growth slowed significantly between 1999-2002, mainly due to the soft economy and the exit
from the market of some significant competitors such as Ascential Software, the DAM market has
shown amazing resilience to market pressures and has incredible growth potential. The two main
segments that are contributing to the rapid growth in this market are the media and entertainment
vertical and enterprise horizontal markets. The Media and Entertainment market includes
applications for DAM in the post-production workflow and archival for film, broadcast, cable,
satellite, IPTV as well as asset management for pre-press, publishing and Web 2.0 applications. In
the enterprise horizontal DAM is used across verticals as an integral part of the marketing, records
maintenance and communications value chain. These segments have large amounts of rich content
that requires DAM solutions for management.

The media and entertainment vertical has traditionally been the main vertical with a wealth of rich
content. Increasingly the enterprise horizontal spanning all verticals has started realizing immense
benefits in speed to market and freed resources by deploying DAM systems to manage their brand
equity as well for management of corporate and marketing communications and training. Within
the Enterprise segment, Government and education verticals are becoming adopters of DAM
systems though not as rapidly. The Life Sciences market is a vertical with immense potential. This
market is expected to exhibit rapid growth once more uniform standards start getting implemented
especially in terms of medical imaging, and Returns on Investments (ROI) achieved from DAM
implementation become more apparent. On the entertainment side the mobile wireless market is
also expected to start adopting DAM solutions in a big way going forward as is the fixed line
telecommunications market as value added services such as IPTV are getting rolled out to
customers globally.

IDC Forecast


IDC believes the digital asset management market will enjoy a compound annual growth rate of
more than 25% during the period of 2006-2010.

Gartner Forecast

Gartner released a report this week predicting explosive growth in digital asset management (DAM)
tools in 2009 and beyond. The growth will be fueled by the increased use of video in the enterprise.
In fact, the report predicts that by 2013 as much as 25 percent of content users see in a day will not
be text documents, but audio, video or images.

The video will come from a variety of sources, including customers who submit videos to their
company website. Whit Andrews, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, says that if
companies don't provide video services, they risk alienating customers looking for such
interactions. Not coincidentally, Gartner surveyed 800 companies last summer and found that
managing multimedia content, video, audio and images, "is the fastest-growing segment of the
content management market, with just 44 percent of enterprises having such products today but 22
percent intending to install it in 2009."

As this type of content explodes inside organizations, it requires specialized content management
found in a DAM. Andrews says the DAM can help solve a number of problems such as incorporating
video into documents. Regardless, if these numbers prove to be correct, then your company needs
to be thinking about digital asset management moving forward to help manage and use this type of
content more efficiently.

Frost & Sullivan Approach

In 2006, the total world DAM market reached approximately one third of a billion dollars in
revenues. This demonstrated a 20+ percent increase over 2005 revenues. The compound annual
growth rate for the forecast period is estimated to continue to be in high in the 20+ percent range.

7. DAM Global Market Status

Products in this market were initially custom built solutions to meet the specific needs of individual firms.
Now product suites have modular architectures so that customers can pick and choose the functionality
they require instead of buying the entire product suite. Product architecture is also very open to allow full
integration with other third party systems. Most architectures are now built on a web services platform to
ease integration. Though most of the platforms currently use J2EE, many vendors are now working on a
.NET strategy as well. Vendors that do not use either platform do have XML based APIs to facilitate
interoperability and integration.

a. Competitive Ecosphere

Products in this market were initially custom built solutions to meet the specific needs of individual
firms. Now product suites have modular architectures so that customers can pick and choose the


functionality they require instead of buying the entire product suite. The number of competitors in
the world DAM market continues to be dynamic as new vendors crop up while others drop out of the
market each year. No vendor even has 5 percent of market share. There are over 70 vendors
worldwide that provide DAM solutions in some form and many more who claim to provide DAM and
have very basic indexing and search capabilities. In 2006 there were different tiers of competition
within the vendor landscape for the DAM market.

These included:

• Large broadcast equipment manufacturers that sold DAM to the media and entertainment
(M&E) market
• Large storage and software companies that sell DAM to enterprise and M&E markets
• Small and highly specialized DAM software companies that sell high-end DAM solutions as
installed or hosted solutions
• Small DAM software companies that sell low-end DAM solutions mainly as workgroup
solutions

The industry has started seeing a lot of investment and consolidation activity since 2002. Many DAM
vendors found themselves in too much of a niche market. Customers felt that they needed more
collaborative bids as their needs were better met by the implementation of a suite of products from
various vendors. This led to strategic partnerships across the DAM value chain. With tight capital
markets these partnerships have been turning towards consolidation. Vendors feel that they can be
more competitive by having a more enhanced product suite through consolidation and also get
funding more easily. Many outside parties are also seeing this industry as very lucrative and looking
to invest into companies in this area. Vendors that do not use either platform do have XML based
APIs to facilitate interoperability and integration.

b. Significant Vendors and Important Acquisitions

Significant vendors in the DAM market include (in no particular order): EMC, NorthPlains,
Interwoven, OpenText, Corbis, Canto, Avid, Getty Images, Widen, ClearStory Systems, MediaBeacon,
Harris, Extensis, Xinet, Paxonix, Blue Order, Vizrt and Apple to name a few in this heavily
fragmented market.

Apart from companies within the DAM space consolidation is also occurring from allied industries.
Key acquisitions since 2000 include Documentum's acquisition of Bulldog and then EMC's
acquisition of Documentum; Savvis's acquisition of Wam!Net; Interwoven's acquisition of Mediabin;
Stellent's acquisition of Ancept followed by the sale of Ancept to North American Systems
International; Avid's acquisition of NXN; Corbis's acquisition of eMotion; OpenText's acquisition of
Artesia; Autonomy's acquisition of Virage; Apple's acquisition of Proximity; Vizrt's acquisition of
Ardendo; Oracle's acquisition of Context Media and INSCI's acquisition of Webware to form
ClearStory. In all these examples the acquiring company belongs to an allied market. This shows
how, as the DAM market evolves, vendors from allied markets looking to enhance their product
offering are going to try and achieve this through buying into the DAM market rather than


reinventing the wheel on their own. Similar acquisition is also expected between DAM and another
growing market - The Marketing Process Optimization Solutions (MPOS) market. Many MPOS
vendors already partner with DAM vendors and/or have some light DAM functionality built into their
solutions. The ability to integrate with third party systems and collaboration platforms has become
very important. Vendors achieve this through either a Web Services architecture or through XML
based APIs for integration.

The use of DAM as the central platform that enables workflow integration with other third party
systems is a growing trend. Some DAM vendors are trying to position themselves as such a
platform themselves by virtue of being built around a Web Services platform, while others are
exploring partnerships with infrastructure providers to achieve that. Many third party solution
vendors that provide components which integrate into a DAM system as a module are finding
lucrative OEM partnerships deals as well, since DAM vendors are now more open to such OEM
partner integrations rather than spend time and resources to develop the module themselves.
These modules are usually around deep video indexing, transcoding and emerging application
modules such as presentation management. 7

The chart below shows the market positioning of key DAM vendors within the competitive
landscape.

Figure 7

7
(An Introduction to the World Digital Asset Management Market)


c. Core Competencies (Benefits of DAM)

Global Access

Global Access provides any user or program with a single logical view of an enterprise’s digital
asset inventory through the most appropriate devices and with role-based views.

Business Problems Solved:

• Easily find/access important information
• Save the time needed to search or recreate assets
• Gain trusted access to existing content and their associated rights to generate new
revenue
• Reliably identify rights related to assets
• Exchange assets and corporate knowledge with partners/stakeholders securely

Business Benefits Gained:

• Providing a best-of-class solution improves relationships and increases satisfaction
• There is an opportunity for new sources of revenue when there is a higher degree of
self-help in the licensing of digital assets

Digital Asset Warehouse

A digital asset warehouse can be defined as the enterprise solution for storage, organization,
search and retrieval of digital assets and their associated rights.

Business Problems Solved

• Can reliably manage large volumes of heterogeneous digital assets
• Centralized logical infrastructure prevents
• Knowledge flight (IP)
• Lost assets
• Recreating existing assets
• Loss of brand consistency across divisions and distribution channels
• Lack of efficiency in locating assets and their associated rights
• Efficiently Track and Protect Rights
• Generates and protects revenue
• Facilitates digitization initiatives rescuing deteriorating physical assets

Business Benefits Gained

• Creating the digital future requires effective control of your digital assets.


• Better control of digital assets and improved reliability of asset integrity delivers better
margins.
• Globalization and market fragmentation have pushed traditional content management
systems to their limits
• As other technologies associated with delivery, customer relationship management and
web content management have matured; the weak link is now the ability to strategically
manage, control and deploy assets.
• Managing advertising campaigns and images to enable reuse, coordinate branding
across multiple advertising and PR firms, leveraging communication channels while
avoiding expensive and wasteful content recreation.

Rich Media Production and Distribution

Rich Media Production and Distribution is the process of creating and producing media (streaming
and non-streaming) and delivering various combinations of these assets across lines of business, to
trading partners and out to customers.

Business Solutions

• Offers an infrastructure and a set of processes that will scale to support the impending
growth in digital assets
• The processes around creating, using and reusing rich media can be simplified and
automated
• Digital channels are used effectively
• Creative collaboration is streamlined and distributed

Business Benefits Gained

• Accessing and managing existing assets is as important as creating new ones
• Digital content growth will justify business process improvements to better leverage
new media
• The digital divide will become increasingly important at the enterprise level and
organizations that cannot integrate their operations and collaborate with their trading
partners via digital channels will be increasingly perceived as lesser partners.

d. Opportunities and Forecast

Digital content has grown in popularity and is expected to do so over the forecast period.
Traditionally companies in the media and entertainment market have been the main users of these
solutions as they have had the maximum amount of content that needs to be digitized and managed.
Though media and entertainment continues to be a major source of demand for digital asset
management (DAM) systems, there has been a shift in focus towards other markets for DAM
system implementation, especially as a tool to facilitate marketing and corporate communications.
This shift in demand has primarily come about because of the extensive and increasing use of


media documents (audio, video, images, and animation) in other segments. Companies in the
corporate horizontal market not only maintain much of their brand equity as rich files but also have
accumulated and are continuously creating a large amount of rich content in corporate
communications and training. This has created an ever-increasing demand to manage this content.

Enterprise Markets - where DAM is primarily used as marketing and corporate communications
tool. This also includes the marketing and corporate side applications for media and entertainment
companies. DAM systems provide archive and management for digital assets used in the business
process of these organizations. The content or digital asset itself is not the product being sold in
these markets. DAM makes a good case for enterprise wide deployment in these markets.

Media and Entertainment (M&E) Markets - where DAM is primarily used as a tool to archive and
manage content through the creation, repurposing and delivery phase of the digital asset and for
these markets the content is the actual product being sold. DAM systems typically see workgroup
level deployments in these markets.

The percentage split in revenue contribution is expected to be initially in favor of the enterprise
market with the M&E market overtaking the enterprise market by 2011. This is because of the
explosion of digital media in the M&E segment which has made content creators, content owners
and content aggregators start looking at asset management solutions seriously.

Apart from healthcare, telecommunications and the mobile wireless markets, increasing DAM
applications in fields such as legal, engineering, manufacturing, retail, financial services and
architecture are expected to help fuel growth. These verticals should continuously increase the
demand for DAM solutions over the forecast period.

The market has an immense amount of growth potential, which is largely driven by the explosion in
the use and creation of digital media and the associated value proposition of increased efficiency,
cycle time acceleration, reduction in the cost of lost or misplaced work, repurposing of assets and
resources among others. Another big driver for the market is the rapid acceptance of DAM as
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). More organizations are now open to outsourcing their content
management needs and have hosted applications help them free up some of their IT burden.

The biggest challenge faced by this market is the deep fragmentation that exists. This has created a
lot of market confusion as many vendors, despite their claims, do not have a true DAM solution but
because of such claims customers get confused about what is a true DAM solution. This at times
leads to bad customer experiences and reluctance towards further technology investment for DAM.

The industry will continue to grow towards maturity and revenues will continue to increase, though
from 2011 growth will be at decreasing rates as the market matures. The DAM market is expected
to cross the billion dollar mark in 2011. As DAM implementation increases over the forecast period
and current restraints decrease in impact, overall market revenues should grow to well over a
billion by the end of the forecast period.


e. Key Future Competitive Factors

There is vast potential for digital asset management (DAM) solutions in the future. As the digital age
is transforming day-to-day life, increasingly digital media applications are being found in every
vertical market segment creating a huge amount of content and in so doing also creating the need
and demand to manage these digital assets. Despite the persistence of some amount of economic
sluggishness and tighter capital markets, this market has proven its viability in today's business
environment. This has led companies like EMC, Apple, Oracle, IBM, HP, Microsoft and Sun
Microsystems among others to also take active interest in this market either through acquisition or
by creating facilitating technology platforms. Successful companies in this market will be the ones
that can leverage their technologies with strategic partnerships with others in the DAM space and
with vendors in complimentary markets in an effort to consolidate their core competencies to gain
market share by targeting multiple verticals instead of using a niche strategy.

Key competitive factors in this market include:

• The ability to integrate with third party systems using a Web services architecture
• Providing DAM through a SaaS model for customers looking at deploying DAM functionality
without burdening internal IT
• Modularity to provide customers with the flexibility to choose from the most relevant
modules for their business processes
• Enhanced metadata models for more refined indexing and search capabilities, especially for
video
• Highly scalable solutions to help customer future proof for increased usage
• Conditional access and DRM (Digital Rights Management) integration to provide enhanced
security
• An increased number of file types/formats that can be handled by the system help
customers deploy a point solution for all their asset management needs

8. DAM Solution for Business

Education Assets, Information Assets, IT Assets, Knowledge Assets, Media Assets, Social Assets, Software
Code Assets are all different types of digital assets. Different departments of a company may create or use
any of these asset types for many different reasons. A DAM is necessary for storing, record keeping, access
controlling of these digital assets. While every department benefits from DAM, one department stands out
from the rest; marketing.

a. DAM Solution for Marketing

TV, Web, cell phones, digital media players, in-store advertising – everywhere you turn rich media is
delivering the message. As consumers become more and more accustomed to receiving marketing
and advertising content through a variety of distribution devices and formats, marketers are
challenged to find ways to meet these expectations.


Digital content is having a profound impact on a wide variety of industries, and no single
department in those industries is more affected than marketing. Regardless of industry, marketing
is a ubiquitous function and one that has traditionally managed the lion’s share of a company’s rich
media such as logos, collateral, TV and radio spots, photographs, graphics, and presentation
materials.

Marketers managing both established and emerging brands need to understand that today’s multi-
channel, digitally-oriented environment requires a well conceived digital asset management plan to
ensure ongoing brand integrity and meet sophisticated and evolving distribution channels.

b. Embracing Marketing Operation: What’s in it for DAM professionals?

It is fair to say that the abbreviation for Marketing Operations — MO — is an apt descriptor of its
potential impact in organizations. Marketing Operations is poised to literally change the modus
operandi of Marketing. And a new modus operandi for Marketing in organizations is great news for
all of us. So whether you are a DAM project manager or business user, it is definitely in your best
interest to become a passionate advocate of MO.

The emergence of MO as a formalized discipline in enterprise today creates tremendous
opportunity for all of us. MO paves the path for DAM, MOM and other comprehensive technology
initiatives by:

• Spawning a new breed of professionals whose sole purpose is to improve efficiency and
effectiveness of their enterprises ’ marketing departments
• Injecting left-brain thinking into the typically right-brained-heavy Marketing function
• Building a marriage between Marketing and IT, as well as other interdependent
stakeholders
• Creating a predisposition toward deploying marketing automation solutions to address such
challenges as optimizing scarce resources, capturing ROI insight and sharing knowledge.

c. How does DAM Help Marketing Through its “Evolution”?

The incredible speed with which the current marketing environment changes, definitely leads to
certain problems:

• Migration from a mass market to a highly segmented market, potentially 1-to-1
• Existence of more products in more variation with shorter product life cycles, potentially
heading into the direction of “tailor made solutions”
• Communicating different kinds of information
• Communicating via an increasing amount of interactive media

As in every evolutionary process (i.e. biological, technological), growth in information transactions
occurs exponentially. Every year the amount of data stored doubles. Even if innovation in


technologies can keep up with the speed, people need to revise their skills in order to adapt to the
changing circumstances and processes need to be adjusted to changing volumes. Marketers
definitely experience the fall-back of this growth. It is impossible for individuals to keep up with this
information expansion. Managers have the feeling that they have less control over what “goes out”,
they suffer more stress and are heading for “Information Fatigue Syndrome”, the 21st century burn
out.

The sheer magnitude of this information growth and the requirements on how to accommodate
these volumes is highly underestimated by many people. This psychological phenomenon originates
from the fact that people experience change, but it is perceived as a linear growth. Even an
exponential curve approximates a straight line when viewed for a brief duration. Our intuition tells
us that situations will change with the current pace.

Technology can be a great help, but will not offer the overall solution. Implementing a content
management system, for instance, does not mean that you have content. The obvious conclusion is
that we need to develop an environment that can adapt to rapid change and creates overall visibility
and control. DAM offers a helping hand.

d. What is Mobile DAM?

“The Possibilities of Archived Streamed Media for Marketers”

As converged mobile devices, such as phones or PDAs become more predominant both in the office
and the home, the use of rich mobile media for marketing or other business activities is likely to
increase. Although beset by a bewildering array of formats, protocols and device hardware, the
principle of mobile DAM, or archived streamed media, is quite straight-forward. Web-enabled
mobile users can either request or be served video or similar ‘rich media’, stored in an online
digital archive. Furthermore, it is now possible to enable users to record video on converged mobile
devices and upload it to the very same archive.

The possibilities for marketers and other business professionals are numerous. First, and perhaps
most obvious, are the possible applications for B2C marketing. Video can be pushed to ‘opt-in’
targets to advertise your latest product or service offers. This provides a highly effective method of
communicating in competitive arenas such as consumer electronics, FMCG or other consumer
retail markets.

Further, video can be distributed to customers as an after-sales service. For example, technology
vendors can send video installation guides to recent customers of products such as plasma TVs,
which in turn provide further up selling opportunities. Media-rich mobile communications can
therefore be considered an increasingly essential component of CRM programs and the wider
marketing mix for these types of businesses.

But it is in B2B markets where the opportunities are most diverse. Video podcasting is gaining
ground as a pull-marketing strategy for businesses ranging from the hi-tech industries to the
public sector – and mobile DAM provides an excellent platform for these sorts of business
communications. Rich media can be used to assist professionals in the field. Consider the use of
detailed video footage of specialist operations for engineers or architects lacking that experience


and who are on-site. From marketing to operational activities, mobile DAM has varied uses for
modern businesses.

Where mobile DAM truly becomes leading-edge is via its reverse application, i.e. enabling mobile
users to record and upload media from converged mobile devices to an online digital archive,
accessible by corporate or public users. In this scenario, videos or photos, etc. can be stored and
shared in organizations, almost in real-time, offering many advantages for professionals in the
field, such as civil engineers or press officers. As the uptake of converged mobile devices spreads,
this use of mobile DAM technology has potential for B2C marketing operations also. Already
forward-thinking businesses who target youth markets have used this technology to enable
consumers at their sponsored events to record and upload their own videos to public websites or
similar.

In summary, mobile DAM provides a host of opportunities for business from almost any sector.
Such systems can be used to push media-rich content to end-users as well as enable mobile users
to upload, store and share rich media with corporate or wider networks. Mobile technologies, in
particular mobile DAM, will be indispensable tools for marketers and other business professionals
in the not so distant future.

9. DAM’s ROI

There is no single metric for measuring the ROI for a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system within a
company. Identifying the criteria and ultimately measuring ROI depends on the use case(s) for how the
DAM system is used. Sometimes, DAM is simply used as a means to access “one version of the truth”,
while in other times it is integral to the full content development, production, and distribution life-cycle.
Business cases justifying the acquisition of a DAM system have included such diverse “ROI” areas as:

• Saving time
• Providing access
• Gaining control of content
• Increasing collaboration
• Ensuring compliance
• Repurposing content
• Identifying new revenue streams
• Reducing technology footprint

To address the many areas that ROI can be demonstrated for a DAM implementation, this paper will
break ROI into two primary categories:

1. Hard dollars (tangible measurable return)
2. Soft dollars (intangible measurable return)


a. DAM – Hard-Dollar ROI

Hard-dollar ROI refers to real dollars that have been saved or gained through the introduction of a
DAM system. When planning for a DAM implementation, companies should focus on high-value
assets in order to realize notable hard dollar return. Adoption and full engagement of the system
will be minimized by offering access to low-value, low-use content. Then they should focus on use
cases that center around the most costly areas of their business. Most common are the high-cost
workflows and functions associated with content development/creation and distribution.

Within the realm of content development there are costs associated with simply developing and
producing custom design – graphics, photographs, video, page layouts, etc. In addition to the time
and materials aspect of content creation is the cost of ownership or licensing of content used.
Licensing can become quite complex and costly as the content may be used for a variety of
mediums (TV, radio, iPod, Web, print, etc.) each requiring its own licensing arrangement.
Distribution expenses take on many forms encompassing both the process of distributing for review
and approval, as well as delivery of final product -- in many cases to a global supply chain.
Regardless of the need, inherent in the process are the hard costs associated with preparing the
content, burning the media to CD, and ultimately shipping. This process and all its associated
expenses will be repeated as changes are made, errors identified, and new materials produced.

The following common high-expense use cases will be addressed:

Repurposing Content

Every marketer knows that there are enormous costs associated with creating new
marketing content whether it is custom graphics, photographs, brochure layouts, or
materials used specifically for the web. Expenses associated with content development can
include:
• Agency Fees
• Freelance Fees
• Licensing Fees
• Legal Fees
• Production Costs

By introducing a Digital Asset Management system, those that are at the heart of creating
content have access to a wealth of materials. There are two primary content repurposing
approaches:

• Content Reuse – Ability to access and retrieve previously created and/or used
content to be used in the same format to save time, money, and maximize the
value of the asset.


• Content Transformation – Ability to access, retrieve, and transform previously
created and/or used content to another format to further extend the value and
use of the asset.

For example, a marketing department might have materials originated as part of another
campaign or design concepts and materials unused, but paid for and available for use. In
addition to saving money, these scenarios also serve to save time, ensure brand designer
layouts, graphics, logos, video, audio, documents, photographs, PowerPoint slides integrity
and consistency, and broaden access to a repository of approved content.

ROI Metric: Identify pre-and post-DAM expenses associated with creating new content.

Reducing Distribution Expenses

A subtle, yet very real expense for companies is the high cost of sharing and distributing
content. As you examine the development lifecycle of marketing assets, you may be
surprised to see how many points content is packaged and shipped (mail, courier, and
overnight) as part of:

• Creative Collaboration
• Quality Assurance
• Legal Review & Approval
• Final Review & Approval
• Production/Fabrication
• Distribution to End Consumers
• Archiving

In the context of content development, materials can potentially be shipped all over the
world numerous times before reaching final approval. Not only is this expensive, but
impacts time to production and market. With a DAM system in place, the review and
approval process is streamlined occurring in-real time and accommodating a
geographically disperse team. In addition, it effectively eliminates the high cost and time-
constraints of delivery services. Those working with an agency can dramatically impact and
control fees incurred for such simple tasks as searching, retrieving, preparing, packaging,
and sending content for yet another round of review as well as gain greater transparency
into the status of projects.

Conversely, agencies with a DAM system can offer customers a value-added service and
help customers save dollars that can be reinvested into new campaigns.

Once materials have been produced, they need to quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively
reach end-consumers. By providing a global self-service option companies can significantly
reduce, and in some cases eliminate the costs associated with delivery. With a digital asset


management system in place, companies can readily make updates and get materials out
into the market faster and far more cost effectively. For marketing departments serving
geographically disperse partners and distributors, the ability to fulfill in real-time with only
approved and market-ready content is a true value-added service. Some companies choose
to provide global partners and distributors with templates and other raw elements allowing
them to self-select and create customize materials for their needs and markets. In this
scenario the production costs are incurred by the channel.

ROI Metric: Compare annual cost of mail, overnight, and courier services pre-and post DAM
implementation.

Addressing New Markets and Distribution Device

Entering new markets can be a costly and unpredictable venture and often requires a
complete re-work of existing marketing materials. Components such as messaging,
language, and imagery may all need to be addressed in order to effectively speak to a new
market. The cost implications of re-creating existing content are obvious.

Similar challenges and expenses also occur when looking to expand marketing reach
through new distribution channels such as web, TV, DVR’s, cell phones, iPod’s, etc. With
each new device, marketers need to evaluate not only the format, but messaging and
imagery to ensure it resonates in the new medium. As seen with the previous hard-dollar
ROI examples, the process of re-purposing content for new markets and distribution devices
can be significantly stream-lined and accomplished much more cost-effectively with a
digital asset management solution in place. Existing content can be accessed, revised,
reviewed, approved, distributed, and stored all within the system. A DAM system eliminates
the need to essentially start from scratch or seek costly out-side assistance to re-work
materials.

In terms of addressing new distribution devices because of the very nature of digital content,
companies can easily identify, retrieve, and transform content to the desired file format to
accommodate other communication vehicles. Often these types of changes can be made in-
house without having to rely on and engage an outside agency or freelancer. At a minimum,
the raw components and marketing concepts exist so that the entire creative process does
not need to start anew, but rather is a matter of re-expression. Companies that have
executed a well conceived DAM strategy are in a much more advantageous position to begin
taking advantage of new and emerging distribution devices.

ROI Metric: Compare historic costs of creating new product and/or penetrating new
markets. Evaluate post-DAM system expenses associated with creating derivative works.


b. DAM – Soft-Dollar ROI

Soft-dollar ROI is the measurement of non-monetary benefits such as time, efficiency, and
responsiveness. These less tangible areas are no less important and constitute a formidable ‘must
have’ need for digital asset management. Many if not most of the soft-dollar ROI results are
interconnected or bi-products of hard-dollar ROI use cases. Often times, it is the soft-dollars that
serve to promote user adoption and provide the most immediate and obvious end-user benefits.
Like its counterpart, the way in which to realize soft-dollar ROI is to evaluate your high-cost use
case, or in this case the most pervasive pain points.

The following common use cases and pain points will be addressed:

Protecting Brand Integrity

Assessing the cost associated with maintaining and building your brand is often hard to
quantify. There are the tangible activities that serve to deliver your name, tagline, and other
brand associated imagery to the market. Such activities can be measured in terms of
revenue and customer response. Then there are the intangibles such as the connection and
relationship the public has in response to your brand. Regardless, every marketer knows
that while it is challenging to build and maintain a brand it is even more difficult to re-build
it once brand erosion has occurred.

One of the keys to ensuring brand integrity is consistency; ensuring that only approved
branding, tags, messaging, and imagery are presented to the market. If a brand is
inconsistently displayed in any form, the outcome can be highly detrimental resulting in loss
of revenue and unanticipated expenses to regain and re-establish the desired brand image.

A digital asset management system is a powerful component of a company’s brand-
management strategy. Marketers and Brand Managers can gain control over the branded
content that is made available to the organization both within and outside their departments.
By providing access to only current and approved brand content (“one version of the truth”),
companies can have greater assurance that their valuable corporate brand is consistently
being displayed.

ROI Metric: While it is difficult to measure the ROI around brand management, it is safe to
say that the financial loss by not maintaining control can be significant.


Enhancing the Creative Process

Consumers not only have tremendous choice in the products and services they purchase,
they have also gained unprecedented control over how and when they will accept messages.
This dynamic places a greater burden on companies to continually produce memorable and
engaging campaigns that will be pushed, published, and aired via a variety of devices.

Arming the creative team with a digital asset management system offers greater efficiency,
access to a host of materials, and information about the content such as when and how it
was used, rights and permissions, and its association with other stored and catalogued
assets. While efficiency is not typically associated with creativity, within the context of DAM
the burden of non-creative tasks such as searching for physical media, gaining approval for
use, accessing hi-res versions, and researching rights and permissions is lifted from the
creative professional. Thus, allowing for more time spent dedicated to the core function of
developing highly creative, quality, brand conscious and memorable marketing deliverables.

As the digital asset repository grows and establishes a comprehensive historical archive of
materials, it can offer a starting point in the creative process. By providing visibility into past
campaigns, previously developed work product, and other materials will help designers,
writers, brand managers, advertisers, and marketers formulate concepts instead of starting
from scratch. While not all content will be repurposed, it can serve as a concept, starting
point, and inspiration.

ROI Metric: Increased time spent on creative versus administrative non-creative tasks.
Reduced frustration experienced by those working with and producing content.

Ensuring Quality Control

Like the concept of enhanced creative process, quality is often a hard area to quantify and
measure. However, when quality is compromised, the repercussions can be costly and
significantly undermine a brand. Cost implications can take the form of legal fines and fees,
a need for unbudgeted PR assistance, as well as lost revenue.

10. Conclusion

The role that digital asset management plays in ensuring quality control spans the content development
lifecycle. Starting at the design phase, those tasked with creating new content are able to access approved
and brand ready assets (“one version of the truth”) as well as important information about each asset in
the form of metadata. The metadata associated with any given asset can include a range of quality control
information including usage rights and permissions, prior uses, commentary, and legal instructions such
as use and placement of disclaimers.


Core to ensuring quality is the ability to collaborate around the work being produced. A streamlined review
and feedback mechanism greatly enhances the creative process by allowing the team at large to share
their collective insights and ideas easily and in real-time. And of course, a more thorough review helps to
ensure there are no erroneous errors (spelling, brand placement, legal disclaimers, etc). By allowing
teams easy real-time access to work-in progress, regardless of location enhances collaboration as well as
speeds the overall review and time to approval.

Digital Asset Management and the need for a DAM system are not readily accepted or even acknowledged
by everyone. However, the facts given in this paper proves that every company is in need of a digital asset
management system whether it is an on-demand system maintained by a service provider or an enterprise
solution that is hosted and managed internally. Tomorrow, with the ever increasing amount of digital
content created, the need for digital asset management on a personal level will be a necessity rather than
a luxury.

The trend that is carrying the entire arsenal of business functions to a web based architecture will
eventually make DAM systems, integrated with other online applications to provide an on-the-fly access to
all necessary information an employee needs to perform his/her tasks from anywhere and anytime.


Works Cited

An Introduction to the World Digital Asset Management Market. White Paper. San Antonio: Frost & Sullivan, 2007.

Gantz, John F, et al. The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe: An Updated Forecast of Worldwide Information
Growth Through 2011. White Paper. Framingham: IDC, 2008.

International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Quantities, Units and Symbols in Physical Chemistry. 2. Oxford:
Blackwell Science, 1993.

Kotob, Hassan. "Business Intelligence." 28 December 2008. eBiz The Insider's Guide to Business and IT Agility. 21
June 2009 <http://www.ebizq.net/topics/bi/features/10782.html?rss>.

Krogh, Peter. The DAM Book, Digital Asset Management for Photographers. Napa: O'Reilly, 2005.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964.

van Niekerk, A J. The Strategic Management of Media Assets; A Methodological Approach. New Orleans: Allied
Academies, 2006.


Appendix A

• 1 Terabyte = 1,024 Gigabytes or 250 DVDs
• 1 Petabyte = 1,024 Terabytes or 250,000 DVDs
• 1 Exabyte = 1,024 Petabytes or 250 million DVDs
• 1 Zettabyte = 1,024 Exabytes or 250 billion DVDs
• 1 Yottabyte = 1,024 Zettabytes or 250 trillion DVDs

Some Interesting facts…

• 200 Terabytes= A digital library of all books ever written in any language
• 100 Petabytes = The amount of data produced in a single minute by the new particle collider at
CERN
• 5 Exabytes = A transcript of all words ever spoken
• 100 Exabytes = A video recording of the all the meetings that took place last year across the world
• 150 Exabytes = The amount of data that has traversed the Internet since its creation
• 175 Exabytes = The amount of data that will cross the Internet in 2010 alone
• 66 Zettabytes = The amount of visual information conveyed from the eyes to the brain of the entire
human race in a single year
• 20 Yottabytes = A holographic snapshot of the earth’s surface


Digital Asset Management Whitepaper by KeyFruit Inc.

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