MAM, I'm a DAM

Enterprises may be just now waking up to the promise and perils of video, but media and broadcast companies have always been trying to manage video (and audio) content. A media asset management (MAM) solution is usually part of broadcaster's efforts to tame the video beast. Broadcasters sometimes refer to a MAM product as a Digital Asset Management (DAM) product. 

To keep things straight, let me clarify the terminology a bit here. Broadly speaking, we refer to digital asset management (DAM) solutions when talking about general purpose software used mainly for image management and put to work in say, brand management and catalog management. Primary examples of ones we evaluate include ADAM Software and Widen. A media asset management (MAM) solution refers to software used to manage time-based audio/video assets (e.g. news clips, sports clips). Examples include Avid Interplay MAM, Dalet Enterprise Edition, Harris Invenio and VizRT Ardendo. Of course, DAM solutions have some video management functionality, and MAM solutions can handle images to some extent, but generally speaking each of them is meant for a specific scenario with deeper functionality for that purpose. 

Just as the single biggest reason for a DAM implementation is to find image assets when needed, the main motivator for a MAM implementation is also search. Every news producer is familiar with the situation: they're 100% sure they have a video clip somewhere but can't find it when they need it. A MAM can serve as an umbrella for the various broadcast systems and tools (believe me there are many of them) and tries to be the single source of truth during the entire lifecycle of a media asset from ingest to archival/purge. MAM solutions typically tend to be platforms - meaning they offer a multitude of features to get your media house in order, but that also means they'll need to be customized and/or extensively configured for your setting before you can start using them. 

We are increasing our focus on the fascinating but complex world of broadcast - Avid Interplay MAM was evaluated in the previous version of our DAM report. Now, version 4.2 of our DAM Report takes a close look at Dalet Enterprise Edition and shines a light on the experiences customers have had trying to implement Dalet. In the summary section, we provide a head to head comparison of Avid and Dalet along different tangible and intangible parameters. As far as we know, this is the first research published with such a structured and detailed comparison of these two complex systems - be sure to let us know what you think. 

We'll keep expanding our MAM coverage, if there are particular vendors in this space you are interested in knowing more about, let us know. 

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Faith Robinson, Content Strategist & Industry Thought Leader

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