I had an opportunity to visit many Media Asset Management vendors exhibiting at the NAB Show. Overall, it's a market that's coming out of hibernation and getting ready for prime time as media companies and broadcasters prepare themselves for a multi-platform world.

MAM vendors come in all shapes and sizes, but mostly come by way of Europe

• Some are small and will struggle to field a football team of their own; many more are the size of a small platoon; the headcount of the larger vendors resembles the the average Facebook friend count (190).


• Some vendors span the entire broadcast chain while many others focus on specific activities only.


• Some remain rooted to their home countries while others travel well.

In coming months, we'll publish detailed evaluations of many of these products. For now, here's the sampler menu, arranged alphabetically.

• Arvato: Formerly known as S4M (solutions for media) and now rebranding itself as Arvato, which is its parent holding company. The big kahuna in its home base Germany but also has a US reseller.


• Aveco: Around since 1992, this Czech vendor is one of the early vendors in the MAM space. Their Astra family of products has clients both at home and in South America.


• Avid: One of the Big-4 MAM vendors. Avid Interplay MAM is now part of the larger Avid Interplay Production offering. We already took a look under the hood and a detailed evaluation is available to our DAM research subscribers.


• CatDV: This is a light-weight solution from UK software company Squarebox. One of the smaller vendors in the space and addresses a sub-set of the broader MAM functionality.


• Cinegy: German company Cinegy has broadcast R&D roots and its MAM offerings are Cinegy Archive and Cinegy Desktop. The company actively participates in standards bodies like AWMA (AWMA).


• Dalet: One of the Big-4 MAM vendors. French vintage but global footprint. Announced Galaxy (according to the company roadmap, available to all customers only next year). Has a well put together solution for the radio side as well. Detailed evaluation of the current core offering Dalet Enterprise Edition is available to our DAM research subscribers.


• Empress: Small US vendor who also offers digitization services. Software product eMAM Enterprise is an asset management system for media companies.


• Etere: Italian vendor with a smattering of clients in other parts of the world, including Asia. Perhaps has the one of the broadest MAM frameworks -  called Media Enterprise Resource Planning (MERP), it is a bouquet consisting of resource planning, MAM and workflows.


• Evertz-Pharos: UK based Pharos was acquired by Canadian company Evertz a couple of years ago. The Pharos product Mediator is their MAM offering.

To be continued in Part 2...