The global market for Digital Asset Management (DAM) solutions – the use of software and hardware to store, organize, retrieve and distribute the world’s exploding volume of digital media files – exceeded $330 million in 2007. A new study from ABI Research forecasts that figure to top $1 billion in 2013. What is behind this robust growth?
“There are a number of factors acting together to drive the Digital Asset Management market,” says industry analyst Zippy Aima. “Apart from the sheer dramatic increase in the amount of digital media assets, one important driver is the need for different departments of an organization to have a seamless workflow in handling the same library of digital content.”
“Many vendors are talking about how their solutions address the need for smooth workflow collaboration,” Aima adds. “DAM systems no longer operate in a ‘silo’ environment, and the solutions available in the market today can tightly integrate with third-party applications and systems already existing in an organization.”
While DAM is now found across a range of enterprises including government, finance, education, retail, manufacturing and pharmaceutical sectors, it got its start in print production, moved on to marketing departments and ad agencies and is now – spurred on by the extremely rapid growth in video content available online – being adopted in the media and entertainment industries.