At last week's Henry Stewart DAM Symposium in London, a lively crowd joined my talk on vendor-neutral approaches to selecting content technologies. The themes and challenges in the DAM ("digital asset management") space aren't much different from those in the larger ECM arena:

• How can we manage content better across organizational silos?
• How can we better relate different content assets to each other?
• How can we use content to create better customer experiences?

This then raises an obvious question: are big, broad ECM vendors the logical supplier of asset management technology as well? I have my doubts.

Let's start with the broader consumer context. The huge increase in video and music files on the public web is highlighting challenges faced by enterprises trying take better advantage of those same content types. Sure, iTunes is popular, but it suffers from its own shortcomings. First, audio quality (one audiophile friend of mine likens iTunes music quality to a low-resolution image that shows just how much detail it's lacking when you enlarge it and look closely). Second, sucky metadata, making playlists labor-intensive rather than automatic.

DAM vendors are attempting to provide tools that respond to such challenges. Pieter Casneuf of Belgian DAM vendor ADAM nicely highlighted the importance of creating relationships among product information, images, and related media.

Given all the creative ferment in both public and enterprise markets for media management, there remains ample room for point solutions that can innovate, as evidenced by the growth of smaller DAM players. Buyers should be aware that the DAM component of an ECM suite is often an island in a larger sea of disconnected products, so the prudent customer will also consider smaller, independent DAM vendors in their evaluation process.