CHICAGO, 23 September 2015 — Digital & Media Asset Management (DAM) vendors have historically been slow to move to the cloud, but pressure from enterprises and a new wave of agile, Software-as-a-Service vendors are forcing longer-standing platforms to rethink their strategies, according to research released by independent analyst firm Real Story Group.

The 769-page report of the DAM industry’s most comprehensive research was released today at the Henry Stewart DAM Conference in Chicago.

Based on extensive research of 43 different digital & media asset management vendors, RSG found that as a general rule, the larger the DAM vendor, the less experience it has with cloud deployments — at a time when CMO-driven DAM efforts tend to favor more turnkey, subscription-oriented deployments.

Real Story Group’s Digital & Media Asset Management research classifies 43 vendors on a spectrum of cloud proclivity:

• At one end of the spectrum, there are pure-play, SaaS vendors like Widen and WebDAM, as well as newer European vendors such as Bynder, Picturepark, FotoWare, and Brandworkz
• At the other end, traditional players like North Plains, ADAM , HP, Adobe, and OpenText have a thinner cloud story
• In the middle of the spectrum, there are vendors like MerlinOne, Canto, and NetXposure that have offered both SaaS and on-premise models for over a decade

RSG cautions customers to distinguish carefully between managed hosting and true, on-demand SaaS platforms. "Not all vendor cloud offerings are created equally,” notes Real Story Group Principal, Theresa Regli.

Real Story Group’s Digital & Media Asset Management Report identifies critical DAM deployment use cases and feature sets, and reviews major vendors around the globe. The research is available to RSG DAM subscribers and for individual purchase.