A Picture Worth 1,000 Words

by Doug Henschen

Rich media assets are the hottest commodity in the world of digital content. Videos, audio clips, graphics and photos may not sound like the stuff of mission-critical business processes, but Documentum and IBM are among those now placing these assets alongside business documents, Web content and code in the pantheon of information management.

Another spotlight was shown on this market in December when Documentum purchased the digital asset management technologies of Toronto-based Bulldog Group. Documentum says the purchase will allow the company to "offer the full spectrum of enterprise content management capabilities as one integrated platform."

Managing rich media isn't important just in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue. The customer base for Bulldog's rich media management tools includes organizations ranging from BBC, Cablevision and Disney to McDonalds and Sears.

Rich media is also making waves among analysts, and it's part of a growth story that's gaining traction on Wall Street. According to an August report from Framingham, MA-based IDC, the digital asset management market will see "tremendous growth" over the next five years, although this is from a starting point of only $117.2 million in 2000.

IDC's study pegs IBM as the leader in rich media management with a 16.6 percent market share. IBM has been plugging away at this market and winning deals at media giants such as McCann-Erickson, CBS and CNN. In December, IBM's work with Coca-Cola was the subject of a major story in the The New York Times. IBM helped create a digital archive with more than 24,000 items covering more than a century's worth of Coke marketing assets. It includes everything from newspaper ads from the 1800s and Norman Rockwell calendars to that famous TV commercial in which a chorus declares "I'd like to teach the world to sing," while, of course, drinking the "Real Thing."

To put this all in perspective, remember that the market for document imaging (a "mature, commoditized" segment of enterprise content management) totals more than $5 billion, according to AIIM figures. Many users of this technology store more than 100,000 digital assets (albeit of a simpler kind) each day. To me, images of a $10 million dollar loan application or of an approval document for a new cancer drug are as valuable as any TV commercial, but they won't sway stock prices or make headlines in The New York Times.

What's important to you likely depends on your position, but the point of enterprise content management and the concept of content infrastructure is that everything can be managed on a single platform and shared across an entire organization. From this perspective, managing content of every kind becomes more of a mission-critical endeavor.