DAM--Getting Organized
Sioux Fleming, Extensis
"Printers work with a diverse collection of customers on a daily basis. It is to their advantage to find a digital asset management solution that is customizable and scalable enough to meet their customers' needs, and even the needs of their clients' customers. As the tide of digital content continues to swell, printers should seek a digital asset management system that can grow from single desktops to network-wide installations to the Internet."
Dave Alsbury, WAM!BASE
"Definitions of digital asset management range from the simple cataloging of images stored on a local server, to an enterprise-wide implementation designed to maximize ROI per image through effective reuse and repurposing of each asset. Another simple, yet elegant, definition comes from GISTICS, the San Rafael, CA-based DAM consulting firm: 'The systematic organization of digital media files, enabling an authorized individual to quickly find, retrieve (and or route) an item to an authorized or designated person, or into an automated work process.'
"If we focus on the enterprise definition given above, digital asset management, or DAM, becomes a collaborative exercise—what this can mean is an expensive server and storage system to store and share all of your corporate assets. Take this tip—a digitally savvy commercial printing site will need a wide area network (WAN) solution to make those assets available to all workflow partners. As for the Internet? The Internet seems the obvious choice, until one of the workflow partners browses and requests 500MBs of images at once. "
Xinet's Internet Endeavor: The Assets of WebNative
WebNative, a companion to FullPress—Xinet's prepress OPI server—enables commercial printers and prepress shops to extend the services they provide via distribution of low-res images and high-res digital art over the World Wide Web.
WebNative allows commercial printers to maintain easily accessible digital libraries for their customers, in addition to distributing FullPress For Placement Only (FPO) images to customers over secure Internet sites.
