As enterprises demand tighter integration between digital asset files and content management systems, developers such as Interwoven Inc. are answering the call.
Interwoven, of Sunnyvale, Calif., this week will announce a packaged integration of its TeamSite content management platform and MediaBin Inc.s Asset Manager, which automates the way companies handle graphics, images, and audio and video files.
This follows similar integrations of Atlanta-based MediaBins Asset Manager into content management software sold by Divine Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
Similarly, Vignette Corp. plans to package its V7 content management platform, announced last week, with the Teams digital asset management software, from Artesia Technologies Inc., in Rockville, Md. Vignette also plans to offer native digital asset management capabilities in V7 within nine months, according to a company spokeswoman, in Austin, Texas.
From the digital asset management side, software provider Ancept Inc., of Minneapolis, is using the enhanced data modeling capabilities in IBMs Content Manager 8 to extend Ancepts Media Server 3, due in the second quarter of next year.
Long the province of media and entertainment companies, digital asset management is becoming more mainstream. Interwoven sees most demand for the technology coming from the manufacturing, financial services and retail sectors, as companies increase the use of graphics and image files on their Web sites and also seek to manage video and audio files used for corporate training and e-learning.
For Harrahs Entertainment Inc., combining TeamSite and Asset Manager is about protecting and unifying its brand across 27 hotel/casino properties. The marketing departments of each property keep their Web sites updated without IT intervention, explained Anika Howard, director of Internet marketing for Harrahs, in Las Vegas. The sites have a consistent look and feel, and images have to be consistent across marketing channels—Web, print and TV, Howard said.
Asset Manager helps Harrahs manage the photographs and graphics on its sites, including automatically converting high-resolution images used for print to lower-resolution images suitable for faster downloads. The integration with TeamSite makes it easier to publish these files to the sites, Howard said.
“Its a seamless process to integrate the images with the content from the Web site,” she said. “Its not a two-step process; they work together easily.”
Asset Manager allows Harrahs to search through image directories for similar types of files. The TeamSite and Asset Manager integration supports searching content and any images related to that content, although Howard said Harrahs hasnt really taken advantage of that feature yet.
For now, TeamSite and Asset Manager are confined to Harrahs Web sites, but Howard said she hopes to extend use of the software into other areas, such as employee training. “When we bought [TeamSite and Asset Manager], we saw it as something we could use more broadly for other applications in the company,” Howard said.
Additional reporting by John S. McCright