On December 1, 2008, with the acquisition of Clearstory Systems, The FeedRoom added market-leading technology for digital asset management to its portfolio of SaaS solutions. At precisely the same moment, Gartner released a five-year prediction foretelling that the rapid adoption of enterprise video, user-generated content and rich media would catapult this mature software category back into the cross-hairs of enterprise buyers and drive renewed market growth.As hopeful as this seemed during a time when “non-essential” software purchases appeared to be shelved for better days TBD, vendors across the space wondered what this would mean for ‘09.

Albeit off to a less explosive start in Q1, the market for digital asset management is, in fact, thriving. In the past few weeks alone, we’ve seen more RFPs and RFIs for digital asset management solutions than perhaps all of the previous 12 months combined. Why? Certainly if the technology ROI was not evident, these efforts would be wasted. That’s not the case. Companies are seeing that DAM solutions featuring workflow automation, integration points with other enterprise systems and support for a wide variety of content standards can reduce costs dramatically, create new efficiencies, and if implemented swiftly and successfully, deliver unprecedented ROI. Sure, some of the these cost savings can come in the form of headcount reduction, but many are derived in other ways such as optimization of investments in rich media, or the ability to serve a global audience and support multiple lines of business on a single platform. These forward-thinking companies are the ones who will lead the way, and if their assessments are correct, then perhaps your company should be thinking about digital asset management in ‘09, too. – Mark P

http://www.feedroom.com