Throughout 2018 RSG has seen an emerging divide between Digital Asset Management vendors who can handle really complex business scenarios and those oriented towards simpler use cases.

In our logo landscape, we showcase technical trends we’re seeing on a complexity spectrum.

Here’s a simple breakdown of the four tiers we’ve seen on this spectrum:

Complex - built to integrate into larger stacks with strong object-orientation and flexible information models, but — for better or worse — increasingly building out services beyond DAM: PIM, Campaign Management, MRM, Web2Print, Copy Management, Creative Workflow, Collaboration, Portal, and so on.

Legacy Complex - these remain in place in many enterprises, and have decent brand reputation. However, these older vendors have tended to prove less innovative, and can bring risky technical debt.

Mid-Range - have adopted some additional services into their offerings, but do not offer the breadth of services or integration flexibility that the Complex or Legacy Complex vendors. At the same time, with the exception of Adobe they will offer lower costs structures when deployed against the specific use cases that they were built to serve.

Simpler - these vendors are mostly focused on providing basic asset repository services. There are lots of similarities among them, but they are trying to differentiate themselves by focusing on lower cost, simpler user experiences, and specialized industry solutions.

Find out which vendors are best suited for your enterprise by using the RealQuadrant Shortlist Generator as part of your DAM research subscription.

Get a free DAM vendor evaluation to reveal more of our latest findings and analysis.

Check out these other DAM resources:

DAM Is Critical in 2018

The Right Way to select Digital and Asset Management Technology 

Will We See Stranger Things for DAM in 2018? 8 Key Trends to Watch