There's been a lot of changes at DAM vendor North Plains over the past year:

• External investment
• A new major release of their flagship product, Telescope (now in version 9)
• A snazzy new iPad app (with plans for an Android version)
• A near 100% sweep and replacement of the executive team (the new CEO, James Christopher, was promoted from within and was formerly VP of Client Services, and former CEO Hassan Kotob is now Executive Chairman).

The company also scored a coup by poaching Open Text's former Digital Media Practice lead in London, Mohan Taylor, who now serves as an experienced DAM services person on the ground in Europe (which North Plains historically lacked; their European presence was primarily some slick German sales gents).

Also of note, as we've written about before, was North Plains' acquisition of Xinet, a vendor focused on creative workflow and pre-press asset management. At the same time, North Plains expanded their peripheral technology offerings, which they mostly call "Brokers" (similar to ADAM's "Studios"). These are separately-priced components that allow developers to integrate Telescope with other enterprise systems, work with assets from a 3rd party application such as Adobe Creative Suite, or transform assets from or to a particular format.

It's pretty clear that North Plains has no intent on stopping where they are now, given the continued growth and refresh of their services, sales, and marketing teams. As I assist Real Story Group subscribers with procurements, with every proposal from North Plains it seems there's a new Broker, a different sort of pricing model, and increasing ambitions. 

Going broader with peripheral technology and acquisitions of vendors such as Xinet -- whose functionality falls earlier than Telescope's in the end-to-end creative process -- is not unlike the growth strategies of larger ECM suite vendors such as Autonomy or Open Text. The main difference, though, is that North Plains is still mostly selling and supporting their own technology that CTO Steve Sauder started coding in his basement. And Sauder is still the CTO. Larger companies often acquire and then shed the sales and services teams that supported the acquired product, much to the detriment of customers who continue to pay license fees. While we could question how much of the Xinet team will still be around in a year, the reality is that Xinet always leaned on 3rd party integrators -- and now those same integrators are no doubt being trained up on North Plains.

As North Plains expands offerings and makes acquisitions, the buying puzzle becomes more complex. For potential buyers and customers of North Plains, never forget, North Plains is the Ferrari of the DAM world. It's complex, full-featured, and not everyone will be able to drive it. Telescope version 9, I was told, is a million and a half lines of code.

The better news coming out of all these changes is that the newest version of Telescope seems more adaptable for casual users, going from feeling like a techie app to something a creative person could embrace. That's a huge change from four years ago, when feedback on North Plains' UX was "techie and unfriendly" -- and customer service was poor.  

One thing that hasn't changed much, though, is North Plains' sky-high pricing. Along with Autonomy's, North Plains' DAM proposals are the most expensive I see. Don't expect to get a Ferrari for the price of a Toyota.  If you're seeking the latter look at something like Canto, Widen, or Razuna instead.