March 8, 2005

Managing Your Library of Digital Assets

The evolution of business brings with it blessings (faster communication, global reach, etc) and challenges such more digital assets (audio, video, presentations, graphics and etc).

Forrester Research estimates the typical midsize company owns up to 50,000 mission-critical digital rich media files that would cost as much as $20 million to replace.

In addition to the cost of re-creating lost files, the cost of using a licensed image incorrectly can be equally costly, as recent headlines about Taster's Choice's 15.6 million dollar mistake demonstrates.

One of the easiest ways for businesses to maximize the value of existing assets is to use Digital Asset Management (DAM) software to create a secure and centralized repository for the retrieval, archival, and reuse of invaluable company assets like marketing materials, sales presentations, corporate logos, images and graphics. If you find your staff drowning in a flood of seemingly unmanageable digital assets consider a digital asset management solution.

Extensis Portfolio is one solution you might want to consider.

In order to archive or share files, retail display consultants, DisplayPlan, had to spend valuable time burning CDs and printing labels, and despite using a catalogue database to manage their CD library, it became a real challenge to find the right CD. File management was also an issue, as it was tricky to determine if any given file had been superseded by a more recent version, archived on another CD or stored on another designer?s computer. CDs were also the only effective source of backup; the designer?s computers were linked using a basic server, but the storage capacity of the desktop Macs often exceeded that of the server itself.

A powerful Mac-based asset management solution, purchased from Apple authorized Reseller Jigsaw Systems, has since solved all of these problems. At the heart of the system is a 1GHz Xserve with 500MB of RAM, a 60GB system drive and two mirrored 180GB drives. Extensis Portfolio Server software provides the interface between the designers and the files, efficiently managing the digital visual assets of the entire company.

Extensis Portfolio 7.0 allows organizations efficient ways to organize, manage, and control their digital assets. A few of the key features are ease of integration, automated workflow tools, and advanced publishing capabilities.

An outline of benefits and features include:

Benefits:

* Boosts efficiency by offloading shared catalog ?sync? and image processing to the server
* More expandability and integration options with connectivity modules for Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle engines
* Hands-off cataloging, keywording and Web distribution and easy with enhanced workflow automation.

Features including: AutoSync, Complete Scalability, Streamlined cataloging, Optional NetPublish Server Edition, SQL Connectivity, Multiple access levels

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