DAM is Still Very European

My January 2021 Vendor Selection Matrix™ reports focused on the management of digital assets. The software market for automating this process has been energized by an explosion in the volumes of digital assets, particularly rich media assets such as photos and video, driven by digital marketing and eCommerce. In some industries such as apparel and retail, this explosion can even include the management of new, dynamic assets created by customers during their buying behavior.

The Digital Asset Management (DAM) process is the storage and management of digital files, in particular digital media files like graphics, videos, sound and text components needed for digital content production. DAM systems can catalog and retrieve the digital assets for various types of users working in marketing, product management, sales, service, design, and manufacturing departments of an organization. 

In my research, I found well over 40 active vendors offering DAM solutions, including open-source providers and vendors active only in their local markets. Although DAM is a mature technology, there is high demand for new DAM projects as more businesses need a management system for the expensive rich media content they now create for digital marketing programs and eCommerce projects.  There is an explosion in the need to manage video files across almost all industries.

I also found a new market driver: companies who enable prospects/customers to configure their products using digital technology on websites, kiosks or other point-of-sale platforms also need to manage those dynamic assets – to support a sales order or just to provide feedback to product designers. This trend, where DAM expands from static digital files to include variants and instances created in the customer-facing delivery phases, which also need to be stored, logged, tagged and retrieved, is most apparent in the apparel and retail industries but I expect it to impact other industries as well in the next years.  I would call this “outside-in” DAM as opposed to the traditional “inside-out” DAM projects. 

EUROPEAN VENDORS DOMINATE DAM

Of particular interest to me, living here in Europe, was that the list of leading global suppliers included several European vendors who have significant worldwide presence. SITECORE, originally founded in Denmark, was voted as #1 in the matrix based on the feedback by the survey respondents and the German vendor CENSHARE was placed #2. 

European businesses tend to be much more process-oriented than North American firms. As the demands of digital marketing and rich media increase the need to install more rigorous business process around digital assets (compliance, security, privacy), vendors who have developed products for the needs of European companies are able to take advantage of their functional leadership in international markets as well.

Several other European vendors BRANDMAKER, BYNDER, CANTO, CELUM, PICTUREPARK, plus ADOBE, APRIMO,CLOUDINARY, NUXEO, and WIDEN complete the list of Market Leaders (vendors with total scores of 4 out of 5 or more for both Strategy and Execution criteria).

The public version of the Vendor Selection Matrix™ report can be viewed here. Some of the vendor listed above offer licensed versions with the full matrix and their vendor scorecard/profile. 

DAM VENDORS IN GERMANY WITH THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

I also did a separate survey of 750 DAM practitioners in Germany and discovered that the top 10 vendors as selected by those respondents included just six non-German companies which is far fewer than usual. The top five vendors in Germany include SITECORE, CENSHARE and the Isreali/California vendor CLOUDINARY that is currently running hot in the retail/eCommerce sector. The vendors ADOBE, BRANDMAKER (German), BYNDER (Dutch), CANTO (German), CELUM (Austrian), CONTENTSERV (Swiss), and NUXEO complete the Market Leaders in the important German upper mid-market segment (or “Gehobenen Mittelstand” as it is called locally). .  

Cloudinary’s version of that report, which is in German language, is available here. And Sitecore’s version is here – they actually changed the layout a little.

Always keeping you informed! Peter