Could the dearth of mid-market vendors stunt DAM growth?

In a recent report, covered in our article, "Gartner expects DAM explosion in coming years [1]," Gartner predicted big growth for digital asset management vendors due in large part to the explosion of video content in the enterprise. But just this week CMS Watch released a new DAM report and warned that the absence of mid-market vendors could hurt growth as companies look for reasonably priced solutions in tough economic times.

According to Theresa Regli, principal DAM analyst at CMS Watch and one of the authors of The Digital & Media Asset Management Report 2009, there are lots of options for small work groups in the $2000-$5000 range, but beyond that the price jumps considerably to $150,000-$200,000. (All prices are in US dollars). Regli says there really aren't many choices in between and this could be an issue, especially this year. "This situation is a serious problem for buyers who need more from their DAM system than a simple digital archive, but don't have six-figure budgets."

One area where you might find a lower cost solution is with an open source product like Razuna [2]. While it's not clear Razuna could scale to meet the needs of an enterprise customer, it might be worth a look to find out. Further, Regli does point out that some traditionally higher-priced vendors like Open Text Artesia are now offering hosted solutions. It should be interesting to watch this year and see if this ends up stunting the growth predictions or if vendors will move to add more reasonably priced solutions to stimulate sales.

For more information:
- read the press release [3]