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Differences between content and digital assets

MM: This might be a good point to quickly define and/or differentiate content from an asset.

EH: Okay. I’ll let you take that one.

MM: As we started to create the conversation in the industry around DAM, we used to draw a pretty hard-line distinction. We said basically that digital assets represent digital files of some sort. Typically, media or editorial. Explicitly created for reuse and re-expression across multiple formats and media.

What makes a digital asset an asset? It entails the metadata describing the asset. And that the assets — that is to say the file and metadata — live within a system with security policies and other sorts of policies for managing the appropriate access to, and use of, these assets.

In contrast, perhaps now a little more fuzzy but in the past, we used to say somewhat tongue-in-cheek — “Content is dumb.” Wherein content represents a “dumb file.” Where we know very little about what’s inside.

Our ability to visualize — to develop a thumbnail or browser to it — was extremely limited. For the most part, content-management systems — were really about managing the flow of these files through a workflow.

Really, at the end of the day, most of the metadata associated with the content was more of a workflow management and/or status reporting about its position in an overall work-in-process framework.

EH: Yes.

MM: Those things began to merge, because a lot of the content creation tools and content management tools have evolved. Frankly, they kind of look a lot like DAM systems, today.

EH: Yes.

MM: With that as a framework, you were going to say something about the evolution of content creation tools?

EH: Yes. If you again go back to those three primary points that I mentioned, DAM system as an enterprise software platform… the database of digital assets as a relatively isolated set of digital assets that are maintained and managed by that enterprise software. Then the desktop as the primary vehicle by which that set of digital assets is created.

I think if you look at all three of those core points from where DAM has come from — and you look at where we’re going to — I think all three of those characteristics are about to go through a period of fairly dramatic change.

Certainly, DAM systems — many of them — are starting to be provided as services. Where you have a DAM as a service. The databases of content being managed by these systems, and the intelligence of the schema behind those digital assets, is something where there’s an increasing need to be able to share that database of digital assets across many systems as a service — of which the DAM system is only one facet in a much broader infrastructure.

Then a key trend that we’re seeing is the increasing movement of content creation applications from the desktop to online. We’ve traditionally seen these desktop tools from Adobe, Microsoft and others. They’re starting to be offered by a broader range of companies and are moving into the web browser along a whole new suite of collaboration capabilities.

Essentially, the notion of checking an asset in and out — which we’ve known for so long in a DAM system — is beginning to fall to the wayside as the asset and its creation service becomes an integral part of the system that’s managing its metadata and allowing users to collaborate and so on.

I think all three of the core points of familiarity for the DAM community are all actually being challenged at their very core, as we move into a Web 2.0 framework. What used to be a balkanized and isolated database of content — essentially a Tower of Babel, where you couldn’t speak the language from one DAM system to another… well, it’s really coming to an end. It has to come to an end.

So the DAM systems themselves — are becoming more interoperable. It’s easier to communicate now from one DAM system to another in terms of sharing content and sharing information, and sharing information between DAM systems and other systems — both in the enterprise and the consumer space. This is enabled by DAM-as-a-service, or Service Oriented Digital Asset Management.

This new world is blurring the lines between content creation and content management — moving to one user experience that’s more integrated, faster, and more richly connected for collaboration. When you create an asset online now, its instantly available to your colleagues around the world.

As you pointed out, in terms of the social nature of these assets, there’s a whole world exploding around the DAM community. For that though, we need to catch up to — in terms of the social nature of assets, and the ability to find out what’s the most popular and who’s commenting on which assets. And the thread of discussions around assets, and the repurposing of those assets across both a business context and a consumer context. And having one framework for that. We aren’t there yet and we need to leap forward,

The way that these trends are manifesting themselves in many ways is definitely as services. I think there’s a whole world evolving around service-oriented DAM. Certainly some of it’s taking place at an enterprise level. But quite a bit of it is being influenced by the consumer web.

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