Real Story Group. Make Better Technology Decisions.

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video may be worth a thousand pictures." Enterprise production and distribution of time-based media (video in particular) calls for specialized technology to support the process. In this Advisory Paper, we provide essential definitions and vendor categories, as well as present key factors to consider when selecting Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and Online Video Platforms (OVPs).

We recently released an update to our Digital & Media Asset Management Report. In addition to our insights on DAM trends for 2012, we now have an in-depth, 12-page evaluation of Avid's Interplay MAM, and a first look at MerlinOne.

Avid is primarily known as a provider of audio and video production technology (Media Composer, Pro Tools, etc.); in early 2010, Avid acquired German company Blue Order for its media asset management software, Media Archive. As 2011 drew to a close, Avid announced the release of Interplay MAM 4.0, the first major release since the acquisition. In our research, we've lifted the hood and taken a detailed look inside.

MerlinOne, meanwhile, sits at a completely different place in the market. A tiny company with roots in the newspaper and print publishing market, MerlinOne remains one of the few DAM vendors wedded to a thick client, while the rest of the industry has moved on to web-based interfaces. We found its system capabilities were limited compared to other DAM vendors we cover, and we detail why in our report.

In 2008 we stated that digital asset management was always the bridesmaid, never the bride. The industry’s most prominent vendors hung in a stasis of 20–50 employees and $8–15 million in revenues. Now in 2012, DAM has earned a more prominent spotlight in the content technology spectrum and moved into the mainstream. Companies beyond the ad agencies and movie studios of the world are implementing DAM and MAM systems at a rapid pace; the job titles of "Digital Asset Manager" or "Director of Digital Assets" are not as rare. As a result, vendors are growing their services teams and plugging their existing technology — or pushing new wares — to meet the demand.

It's a fact of business life that software vendors sometimes go out of business or vendors sunset their products. This actually happens less than most customers fear, but when it does happen, the results can range from damaging to catastrophic. Therefore, a prudent customer will monitor key technologies and suppliers for potential problems. Fortunately, a failing vendor or product will exhibit telltale signs of coming failure. Led by RSG founder Tony Byrne, this webinar will share ten key "early warning signs," so you can conduct your own risk mitigation accordingly.

With rare exceptions, most enterprises do not employ business software "out of the box." Rather, they create applications. Applications are a specialized implementation of a piece of software that achieves a particular business purpose, and they are critical to obtaining value in your specific business environment. However, creating applications requires development expertise, time, and funds. Applications also require configuration management: the process of synchronizing and testing multiple concurrent changes. Yet even with testing, bugs and instability frequently haunt them. SaaS (Software as a Service) and cloud-based services obviate only some (but not all) of these challenges.

It's been over 10 years since we first came across SharePoint and so much has changed in that time. Changes both in terms of the products, but also in terms of buyers and market expectations. Alan believes that SharePoint is approaching something of a crossroads, one that users of the platform may be more aware of than Microsoft and its partner channel. The times they are a-changing...and SharePoint has evolved in ways nobody could have expected. The competition, meanwhile, is far from rolling over and giving up. In fact it has adapted remarkably well. Who is buying SharePoint in 2011, why are they buying it and when might this Microsoft steamroller of success finally begin to run out of steam?

When you or your software vendors provide mobile access to business applications, there are two broad choices:

1. Create downloadable applications (or mobile apps) that are optimized for different device/operating system combinations.
2. Create web-based applications (web apps) that target a broader mobile population of browser-enabled devices.

Proponents of web-based apps claim that technologies such as HTML5 will make mobile apps obsolete. There is merit to this argument, but it's not completely valid. Both approaches will continue to coexist, and therefore you need to decide which approaches are suitable for your scenarios. This paper helps you make these choices.
Download this advisory paper here.

We've just published a major update to the Digital and Media Asset Management Version 4.0 Report. Version 4.0 includes two new in-depth product reviews: Adobe's Scene7 and Dutchsoftware's Elvis DAM. We have also updated our reviews of new major releases from North Plains and Extensis.

In addition, we've included a preview of Avid Interplay's move to HTML5. We have expanded our evaluation charts to include more granular ratings on vendors' ability to perform image transformations, video transcoding, and technical capabilities such as extensibility, integration, and application development. Lastly, there are updates to DAM & MAM trends for 2011 into 2012.

Download The Digital and Media Asset Management Version 4.0 Report now.

SharePoint's licensing structure has always been complicated, and with new variants and options, SharePoint 2010 is no exception. Moreover, with the advent of BPOS and its successor Office 365, you have recourse to new deployment options with distinct licensing models.

Depending on which version of SharePoint you deploy, the licensing cost can range from nearly zero to hundreds of dollars per seat. This is because Microsoft sells several versions of SharePoint, but each version is packaged with different capabilities and licensing schemes. If you don’t understand the varieties, you'll only get half the story.

As a buyer, in order to budget for SharePoint accurately, you need to assess the various levels and deployment options carefully.

We've just published an update to the Digital and Media Asset Management Version 3.3 Report. The Adobe CQ, VYRE Unify, and Nuxeo Evaluations have all been updated.

It's a fact of business life that software vendors sometimes go out of business or vendors sometimes sunset their products. This actually happens less than most customers fear, but when it does happen, the results can range from damaging to catastrophic. Therefore, a prudent customer will monitor key technologies and suppliers for potential problems.

Fortunately, a failing vendor or open source project will exhibit telltale signs of a coming failure. By identifying these signs as a customer, you can conduct your own risk mitigation accordingly. This paper identifies ten potential warning signs and offers an approach to distinguish between simple technical or business hiccups, and potentially serious trouble. It includes a simple quiz for you to rate likely risk levels among your key technology suppliers.

The word adobe traces its roots to spoken Arabic, where it was al tub, or "the brick." Adobe's recently announced Digital Enterprise Platform (ADEP) can be best described as a tub of bricks for building tablet, mobile, web, and desktop applications. The "tub" in this case is CRX -- the repository layer that Adobe took over via the Day Software acquisition. ADEP also incorporates Adobe's longstanding LiveCycle offering, along with other related services and glue code. Although the first version of ADEP won't go live until August 2011, it represents an important attempt to rationalize and integrate a variety of Adobe tools and services under one framework, with multichannel "Customer Experience Management" as the unifying theme. There's important long-term potential here, but the real customer value remains unproven at this time. This paper looks at the promise and the potential pitfalls of ADEP from that perspective.

Download this advisory paper here.

We've just published a major update to the DAM Version 3.2 Report. Version 3.2 includes updates to the "Trends for 2011" section and it adds new insights into mobile/tablet-based media management. We've also included celum as a new vendor in the Mid-Market Challengers category.

The software engineering community has spawned many different methods to estimate levels of effort for implementing projects. You could debate the validity or accuracy yielded by these projection methods, but the fact remains that they're widely employed. However, in our experience, established methods generally don't fare well for packaged software implementation efforts in general -- content management projects in particular. In this advisory, we examine the shortcomings of traditional approaches, and explore more useful alternatives.
Download this advisory paper here.

Content persistence refers to how you store digital information while maintaining your regular content management activities. In any content management system -- albeit web content management (WCM), document management (DM) or digital asset management (DAM) -- how content is persisted is an important (but oft-ignored) aspect of the overall content lifecycle. Business users typically want easy access to content and don't tend to care where content is persisted. However, the mechanics of persistence have always been an important consideration for IT and system admin specialists -- particularly since these decisions can impact the business user experience, as well. A content management system usually persists content in a file system, a database, a custom repository, or some combination of the three. Different product vendors take different approaches to persisting content, with some offering more flexibility than others. In all cases, you have critical trade-offs to consider before finalizing your approach.

Download this advisory paper here.

"Portal" has always been a highly misused term. Depending on the context, people will say "portal" in reference to an intranet, a dynamic public website, a self-service application, a secured social network, a user interface on an ERP system, or all -- or none -- of the above. These represent vastly different business scenarios, and as such, there is no single set of technology that automatically applies in all cases. Today, the modern enterprise faces demands for multiple portal-like applications. To meet those demands, you can select from at least four major technology options, ranging from out-of-the-box tools, to custom solutions. This advisory explores the pros and cons of these alternatives, so you can make the right choice.

Download this advisory paper here.

Digital Asset Management primarily focuses on managing non-textual assets: images, video, audio, and the like. Historically, DAM mostly has remained the concern of brand managers, creative designers, ad agencies, broadcasters, and movie studio managers. More recently, however, the convergence of enterprise content initiatives and the growth of media volumes across many sectors have intranet and web content managers wondering if their existing web CMS (or SharePoint) adequately meets their DAM needs. Download and read the full Advisory Paper here.

The 2011 Digital Asset Management Market Analysis is now available for download. In addition to analysis on the state of the DAM market, this advisory paper includes our new and improved Digital Asset Management Cross-Check that evaluates buyer risk. Download the 2011 DAM Market Analysis here.

Requests for Information (RFIs) will help you gather information to make better decisions, and eliminate suppliers that cannot or should not be working with you. Download the advisory paper here.

All our DAM vendor and product evaluations have been updated based on current releases, including the new version 7 of Autonomy Virage Media Bin and the newly debuted Open Text Media Management (formerly Artesia). Also completely new to our research are reviews of open-source DAM offerings Fedora and Nuxeo. Download the latest evaluations here.

Balancing enterprise needs with employee usability. Download the paper here.

Recently released paper makes sense of the very complex world of enterprise software licences. Download the paper here.