Feature Article: Why Vendors Must Adapt to the Shifting Tides of the DAM Market
Digital transformation and IT consultant Martin Reinheimer has kindly contributed an article exploring the new wave of market challenges for DAM and the implications for both vendors and customers alike. The article examines a number of factors behind this state of flux, including acquisitions, emerging technologies, and changes in the way customers are using DAM software.
Martin begins by providing a brief history of DAM, and how previous layers of in-house technologies, primarily image repositories and web-to-print systems, ultimately petrified into the monolithic software architecture that a number of vendors are still clinging to.
“Manufacturers were able to rest on IT architectures that had grown over many years and had been iteratively expanded with new functions, always emphasising the high-quality standards that the solution met. The architectures were based on established standards and programming languages, which led to a monolithic structure. They didn’t have a product, but rather sold (and maintained) a large number of projects. In doing so, they tried to fulfil the respective customer requirements, which diluted the product character and made every further core development difficult – and increasingly costly, as every change in the product required the holistic testing of every project, including the subsequent deployment of every single instance.” [Read More]
Martin continues by explaining how the introduction of cloud storage infrastructures was the first major wave to disrupt the traditional approach to DAM, prompting a shift away from on-premise solutions to a more modular online software model that included the consumption of web services, APIs and headless architectures.
“With new IT architectures, functional modules were implemented as lightweight services that are globally available as web services. Services are controlled via well-defined APIs and can therefore be maintained and further developed atomically.” [Read More]
Subsequent developments, such as the explosion of social media and omni-channel marketing, which Martin claims also heralded a noticeable decline in the quality of digital assets, culminated in a relatively fast transition to a dynamic, multi-faceted digital content landscape that stood in stark contrast to the stagnant pool that was DAM innovation. Martin also highlights how the rapid adoption of AI and its integration into the digital content supply chain have further contributed to a more complex marketplace.
“For established providers, the development is problematic – you have to recognise early enough that the market and requirements are changing; you also have to deal with the new technologies. Migrating an existing product to the new world of technology often seems impossible – the old solution has grown too wildly, and often the only option is a hard cut and the start of a completely new development.” [Read More]
The article concludes with a number of tips for both DAM providers and customers, highlighting that timing is crucial in such a rapidly changing environment. It may be easier for existing vendors to focus on either state-of-the-art solutions or highly specialised niche sectors, whereas emerging vendors may find it easier to develop DAM systems that provide only a well-designed set of rudimentary features.
“This development is a great opportunity for new providers: despite a lack of expertise in image processing, it will be much easier to develop a system that focuses on the basic DAM fundamentals: Creating, managing and delivering digital assets – preferably via content delivery networks and with flexibly scalable performance according to demand.” [Read More]
You can read the full article at the link below.
Share this Article: