There have been some recent reports flowing around that there are dwindling solutions for the mid-market space in the Digital Asset Management (DAM) environment. While this is certainly true, we would like to give you a different aspect of your needs and why a open source Digital Asset Management System, like Razuna, might be the solution to your needs.
The Price paradigm
Let’s start by what most “S” and “M” (of the SMEs out there) are sooner or later confronted with, the license cost. In the past most “S & M” organizations have been put off by the need for a Digital Asset Management System, by the license cost alone. No wonder, when Enterprise vendors usually charge from $50000 – $150000 for a single license. Sure, those Enterprise vendors will sell you a scaled down solution for less then that, but remember the “hidden” costs (usually you need some very good server hardware to justify the software), and also the upgrade costs. At the end you might end up in the upper $70000 class with your “scaled down” solution. Of course, if you need such a system and use the additional benefits of it (usually they are Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions with a dedicated DAM part) then we will not hold you back. But since this post is about the mid-market space we concentrate on other solutions.
On the other hand you will have a couple of solutions on the lower price range, that go from $5000 – $15000. Usually, those systems will suffice you for some time, but when you are growing from a “S” to a “M” your DAM might have some scalability issues. The ability to scale is a important issue and one that should not be taken lightly. Just imagine what effort you have to undertake to move from one system to another (exporting your assets and importing them). Most often DAM systems are not compatible to each other and informations like Meta-Data, Keywords, and more might get lost in the transition. Not to speak of the time involved and wasted for your employees to adopt to a new system.
So, let us turn our attention to a open source Digital Asset Management offering. Of course, the most obvious advantage is that you are able to use it for free (according to the open source license). But should the “free” tag really be the only driving factor? We think not.
So, let’s look in what you should be looking out for in a DAM solution.
Scalability
A open source Digital Asset Management System gives you freedom. Not only freedom of license costs, but also freedom to expand on the existing code base, deploy many servers (load balancing) without additional server licenses and flexibility. You won’t have to go from a standard to a Enterprise Edition to be allowed to add more users or add more assets.
Faster reaction and community driven
I don’t know what your experiences are with locked down proprietary systems, but mine, in regards to bug fixes and enhancements, were “not open minded”. Meaning, you see the need to feature “XYZ” and submit it to the vendor. Usually, you get a feedback that it might be considered and then it is shelfed off to some internal system.
With a open source Digital Asset Management System, or let’s say in the case of our open source Digital Asset Management Razuna and the developers involved, you can join our growing numbers of Razuna users and can actively engage in discussions and put forward feature requests. Just recently we released a new version and 3 feature requests from our customer base were included. No only that, but turnaround time for new releases are around 2 months and you as the customer even has access our Source Code repository where you can get the latest code changes anytime.
Support
Support and Training for your Digital Asset Management solution should not be undermined. It is a important aspect that you should consider. What are the reaction times, how fast would a bug be fixed, how can the organization be reached and so on.
Again, true open source vendors, give you the option to subscribe to a support plan that gives you added value and not bind you to upgrades that are only applied when you still pay a hefty annual fee. Because what really matters, is your deployment of the system.
To summarize the above, one could simply say that, a true open source Digital Asset Management System gives you freedom to plan, deploy and scale your Small, Medium and Enterprise organization.
