Why DAM Users and Vendors Both Need Vendor-Neutral Content Digital Asset Hubs
Earlier this week, CI HUB published an article I wrote on their blog about the significance of vendor-neutral digital asset hubs in content digital asset supply chains: Managing Upstream Digital Asset Sources and the Need for Vendor Neutral Digital Asset Hubs. For those unaware what this means, it is a third party tool which connects to lots of different DAMs (and other sources of content digital assets) to allow digital assets to be searched, viewed and downloaded directly to a wide range of production/productivity tools like Photoshop, Word and many others:
“In essence, a vendor neutral digital hub is needed where all the required integration protocols have already been defined and implemented. Ideally this can be accessed from inside the creative, productivity and production tools which where the users carry out most of their work so they are not forced to leave the application to go off and download digital assets.” [Read More]
There is also an intro from Andreas Michalski, CEO of CI HUB also which provides some useful context.
I have had a look at CI HUB’s product and the concept is very simple and easy for end-users to get to grips with (although the technology behind it is anything but). A few years ago, various interoperability protocols were discussed in the DAM industry which would have potentially made systems like this unnecessary. None of them got anywhere, however and there was very little backing from the sell-side of the market. The DAM establishment ignored this problem, mainly because either they didn’t understand it existed or took the view that they couldn’t generate consulting fees and marketing opportunities from it. This has proven to be exceptionally short-sighted (and by no means unusual in DAM, it must be said).
It is, therefore, no surprise that a more nimble commercial operation like CI HUB who have real-world experience of both using and developing DAM technologies have spotted an opportunity and are now capitalising on it. From what I gather, their technology is now plugged into many different digital asset sources (including many DAMs and other tools) as well as end-points, the latest being WordPress (which I believe is the most popular currently available Web CMS).
I know a number of DAM vendor representatives read DAM News, I would recommend they peruse my article and give some thought to these kind of tools (if they have not already).
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End-users expect their DAM solution to integrate with all the tools they use. Let’s be honest, as a vendor it’s a pain having to develop native integrations and keep them working as new versions come out. Plus it’s impractical to develop plugins for every one of the hundreds of creative, CMS and social media scheduling tools out there.
So the concept of CI HUB is fantastic. We integrated it with Dash (our latest DAM platform) as soon as we could.
I believe it is a great idea to integrate tools as it leads to a seamless experience for the user. For example, when purchasing a CRM, many look of integrations with existing productivity tools. Making a user centric DAM entails creating an interoperability experience so that users can easily search and download content that is relevant to them. Vendor neutral digital assets can also improve reliability and bolster ease of access for the end user. Overall, these integrations would improve the DAM ecosystem as a whole by allowing a user to easily navigate and save time on tasks. Saving time and resources would immediately create more value and efficiency. So, it is definitely worthwhile to consider interoperability protocols to drive this forward.