Cumulus & DAM News

Cumulus 7 Released

2006-07-05T17:37:00.000-04:00

Announced today by Canto:
Canto Releases Cumulus 7

Workflow Productivity increases with Newest Version of Market-Leader DAM Software Cumulus

Canto today announced the release of Cumulus 7, the latest upgrade to its established Cumulus product line. Designed to integrate seamlessly into creative workflows, Cumulus 7 offers significant performance gains and enhancements for security, Web-based DAM, automation and usability that benefit users, administrators and project managers alike.

New features promote increased asset control, faster production, and more efficient collaboration, improving the business of organizations that have made asset management an integral part of their marketing and communication processes.

The innovations that improve the users' workflows are a large part of the advantages offered by Cumulus 7.
A new intuitive user interface will help users become more proficient. The ability to identify and manage the relationships between assets is now available for all Cumulus solutions. This means the images referenced in QuarkXPress or InDesign layouts, pages contained in MS Word documents, and even slides in PowerPoint presentations can be virtually "connected" to the assets that reference them. Cumulus 7 Enterprise can even catalog referenced files automatically when the layout files are cataloged. The new interface allows the user to easily find Alternates or Variants, or trace other relationships between assets.

"Cumulus 7 delivers a lot of innovative techniques and users will find that the system's ability to automatically manage how assets relate to each other is invaluable." said Jennifer Neumann, Canto's CEO. "Manually managing all the relationships between assets is outright impossible. By solving this relationship management issue, a Cumulus DAM system becomes a must-have solution."

With the introduction of Shared Collections, Cumulus 7 reduces search times and eliminates the risk of co-workers and clients using the wrong assets, as they immediately only see the asset records related to their current projects, without any searching.

Users can now label and rate asset records with visual tags that make it easy to see which assets have been approved, rejected, put on hold and which are new.
Other enhancements include innovative "Actions" to automate workflow steps, new image conversion and processing features, creation of PPT presentations and printing improvements. PDF proof sheets can be created, even if you don't have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer. Print Templates allow users to define output layouts to re-use and share with others.

Web Services integration enables Cumulus 7 to become a standards-compliant participant, with minimal development efforts, in complex, Web-based application infrastructures. Web collaboration has been optimized with the Cumulus 7 Web Clients now working just like Native Client applications. Record and Category View Sets can now be used with the Cumulus 7 Web Clients, and context menu support has been added. Overall performance has been improved and especially the time to connect to catalogs has been reduced.

The Cumulus product line has always been an industry leader with regard to permissions power. Cumulus 7 takes this legacy a few steps further, offering asset security and control beyond what has ever before been offered by Canto.

The back-end of Cumulus 7 has also seen some powerful updates with database engine and server enhancements such as the introduction of mirroring and transforming Cumulus 7's database engine into a high-performance "permanent" cache.

Cumulus 7 Server and Client software also run "natively" as Universal Binary applications on Intel-based Macintosh computers, so the Client is now "Cocoa-native." Together, these important features ensure Cumulus Mac Clients and Servers are delivering the best performance Mac OS Cumulus users have ever seen.

Availability
Cumulus 7 Server Solutions for Workgroup and Enterprise are immediately available. Server versions for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Solaris, and Client versions for Mac OS X and Windows are offered.

Quark & Canto - DAM and Layout

2006-05-24T17:15:00.000-04:00

Found on today's news:

Quark and Canto Announce Strategic Alliance; Delivering Integrated Digital Asset Management and Page Layout Solutions for the Creative Markets

NEW YORKMay 23, 2006--Quark Inc. and Canto Inc. announced today a strategic alliance to tightly integrate QuarkXPress 7 with Canto's Cumulus digital asset management (DAM) system to enable more efficiency and provide quicker time-to-market for creative professionals. In addition, Canto has announced two new products that provide integrated support for QuarkXPress 7 and Quark Dynamic Document Server (QuarkDDS) in the Canto Cumulus product line.

By leveraging Canto's DAM tools with two of the unique, new features in QuarkXPress 7 -- Composition Zones and Job Jackets technology -- QuarkXPress customers can manage assets and produce projects more efficiently while avoiding costly errors. The integration between Canto Cumulus and QuarkXPress allows significant improvements in time-to-market by providing QuarkXPress users with direct access to the Cumulus system so that they can exchange, store, and retrieve assets such as QuarkXPress projects, Job Jackets, text, and picture elements. Canto also plans to integrate Cumulus with QuarkDDS - a core technology for creating customized, creative communications for multi-channel delivery to print, e-mail, and the Web.

"Page layout design and digital asset management tools need to be used in conjunction in order to work efficiently," said Jennifer Neumann, CEO of Canto. "We recognized that QuarkXPress 7 has two unique and key conceptual features with Quark Job Jackets and Composition Zones that are vital for our customers. By working together with Quark, we are providing customers with powerful publishing tools that yield optimal results."

"Integrating digital asset management into design and page layout tools is essential in today's high-paced design and production industry," said Richard Pasewark, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Quark. "Canto's scalable digital asset management solution and proven leadership in the market were an easy choice for Quark. We are very pleased to enter into this alliance to provide our customers with innovative solutions that can be used to make their design and production workflows more efficient."

Workflows and Processes in Marketing

2006-05-03T19:24:00.000-04:00

A while ago Canto announced an upcoming product called CanFlow that definitely hits a nerve or even two: the DAM arena is changing and the way marketing is rated within a company is also changing.
I deal with both and can only welcome Canto's approach.
Marketing departments are increasingly being called to account and required to become profit centers within an organization. Rightly so, but the fear of losing the creativity along the line is justified. I actually have a sign on my door that says: Creative people can't be managed! Which in a way is true but if our work can be managed and moreover the way we work, then I'm all for it. And here comes DAM, well actually the new generation of solutions of which asset management is a vital component.
The mere DAM tool that archived my work, managed the company's brands and allowed us to collaborate even over the Web was a big help and time-saver-no doubt about that. But as you marketers all know: creating and executing a campaign has become so complex and time to market has become the crucial factor. A workflow tool that works together with all components needed for the busines process and that guides us through the project from start to finish will definitely free my mind so that productivity no longer means that creativity has to suffer.
HP's Eric Kintz has written an excellent piece called Is process a bad word in marketing? that underlines the fact that we really need processes in marketing these days.
Workflow automation is not a bad thing if it helps me not turn into an automated marketer - as my team is already looking forward to reducing the stress factor (including nervous breakdowns that are so common in marketing departments under time pressure) we will go with the Flow.

Canto's Cumulus 7 to support Intel Macs

2006-04-06T03:24:00.000-04:00

Canto today announced that Cumulus 7, the next version of its digital asset management software, will run natively on both PowerPC- and Intel-based Macs..

The upgrade will combine powerful workflow capabilities along with enhanced security features to facilitate collaboration for creative and production teams and their customers. Cumulus 7 will be built on the Cocoa interfaces of Mac OS X. This will allow to leverage the Java 1.4/1.5 interfaces, which it says are superior in performance, features and stability to the Java 1.3 interfaces to which the Cumulus 6.x versions, running on the Carbon interfaces, are limited. It will also feature a new Web Services interface that will allow solutions to integrate Cumulus functionality within portals or other business process solutions.

"Our focus is on providing the very best solutions possible to our customers who require fast and efficient workflows," said Jennifer Neumann, CEO of Canto. "Beta tests of the Universal version of Cumulus 7 on the new Intel based Macs have already delivered significant performance boosts that every creative or production user will appreciate."

Extending the existing trigger functionality in Cumulus 6 that was mostly used to notify subscribers to changes of assets will now be available in Cumulus 7 to build an entire chain of automated actions as a result of any change to the system's data.

In addition, Cumulus 7 will further extend the security features for assets and metadata. On a catalog-by-catalog basis permissions can be set efficiently, but protection can also be easily applied on an asset-by-asset or even metadata level.

The complete list of new features in Cumulus 7 will be announced when the product ships in early summer 2006. Cumulus 7 Servers will be available for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and Solaris, and native/rich Client versions for Mac OS X and Windows are offered.

The company said that customers who buy a Cumulus 6 Workgroup or Enterprise solution between now and the release of Cumulus 7 will receive a free upgrade.

Metadata and Taxonomy

2005-12-01T06:52:00.000-05:00

I've just completed the set-up of a large database with many catalogs for audio and video content - it took me three months! Not that ingestion of the media took so long, no it was mainly preperation time: how do I structure this properly so that it makes sense in the future and also for the other users? What kind of metadata will help us work with our media in the long run?

Now taxonomy might be exciting for a dedicated librarian or an archivist in a museum, for me it seemed like an insurmountable challenge in the beginning. If you're more of a creative worker the last thing you want to do is sit down and rack your brains about catalog structures. However, I've learned my lesson and a lot more along the way.
If you do invest the time in setting up a good structure, naming your categories or folders properly and assigning the right metadata, DAM-life will be so much easier once your done.

Of course at present there are so many standards and metadata and taxonomy guidelines around that you really have to take a close look at what your requirements are. If you are an ad agency it is rather unlikely that the taxonomy guidelines for a library will be something you can go by. Ok, if you ARE a librarian you might want to look at the following webpage of IFLA that lists all metadata resources (reading them all might become your new lifelong project!). http://www.ifla.org/II/metadata.htm

Being a Cumulus user I found a good guide for my metadata considerations and first steps at Canto's website. It's written by Geoff Bock and "provides an overview on managing digital assets within an enterprise, as well as setting out the principles of defining and maintaining metadata." You'll find the white paper here: "http://www.canto.com/pro/index.php?metadata.php&2"

For a more general view on metadata, especially in the Adobe and Microsoft world you should have a look at the Real Strategies blog at http://blog.reallysi.com/really_strategies_blog/metadata/
It also gives you some insight on the XMP hype..but dear reader I won't get into that now...and maybe never, I've had enough of structure and standards in the past months.

Digital Asset Management for Catalogers

2005-11-03T06:26:00.000-05:00

Catalog producers such as mail order businesses, stock photo agencies or nationwide department stores are changing the way they create their millions of pages with a never ending amount of product images and information. DAM systems are becoming a natural choice for catalogers as their workflow becomes increasingly digital.
Writer Gretchen Peck who specializes in the graphic arts and printing industries takes a closer look on how catalogers are saving time and money using DAM in an article in this months Catalog Success magazine:
http://www.catalogsuccess.com/features/284615118033290.bsp

Introduction to Digital Asset Management (DAM)

2005-11-01T08:26:00.000-05:00

A brief overview of DAM basics

DAM, ECM, Metadata, MAM and BAM are just some of the terms and buzzwords you will come across when you start researching how to manage your digital media efficiently. If you are new to Digital Asset Management you will want to know what it’s all about and if a DAM solution is really what you need before you start exploring the functionality and features of Canto’s Cumulus solutions.
The more scientific explanation of DAM would be: “Digital Asset Management is a series of set-up technologies and procedures that allow the storage, retrieval, and reuse of the digital files that are valuable to a company or organization. By employing the descriptive information (metadata) attached to the assets, DAM provides and supports the business rules and processes required to acquire, store, index, secure, search, export and transform them.”

Albeit you have that theoretical knowledge you might still be left with some basic yet relevant questions. Below we have listed some short but clear answers to the most frequent inquiries we receive about DAM and Metadata. After learning the basic facts you will want to know how the Cumulus DAM solutions fit into your business and workflow. You will find more information on the Cumulus product pages, finally your local Cumulus reseller or system integrator can advise you on how to best employ Digital Asset Management in your organization.

WHAT is Digital Asset Management? WHAT are Digital Assets?
Digital Assets (or in short: Assets) are digital.
Every Asset costs money to create or license.
Assets are usually big or complex and stored in files.
Different kinds of Assets are used depending on individual customer needs.
Digital Asset Management (or short: DAM) manages the assets and at the
same time the Metadata.
DAM also is about the workflow to create, archive and use Assets.

WHAT is Metadata? WHO or what creates the Metadata?
Metadata is „data about data“. It describes the Asset.
Metadata is used to efficiently find Assets.
Metadata defines the Rights & Permissions for Assets.
Metadata can specify the Workflow to create an Asset
Metadata can be file format specific and be generated by the authoring tool, in which case the DAM system needs to extract it when cataloging.
Metadata might have to be created and managed manually.
Metadata can be generated implicitly by using the DAM solution.

WHAT are the challenges with Metadata?
WHAT is the hidden cost of DAM?
Metadata needs to be applied consistently. Therefore a Taxonomy and categorization should be created first.
Metadata entry can be time-consuming and costly.
The Metadata needs to reflect the business the Assets are used for.
Therefore Metadata needs are specific to individual customer needs.
As business changes, so do the Metadata needs. The DAM system has to be very flexible.
A workflow to enforce consistent metadata entry and to assure the quality and on-time delivery of Assets typically needs to be custom-designed by a system integrator and can be costly.

What are the benefits of DAM?
How can Workflow result in efficiency gains?
DAM improves archiving and finding assets.
DAM avoids that Assets are licensed or created multiple times.
DAM prevents misuse of copyrighted material.
DAM prevents the use of out-dated or wrong Assets.
DAM eliminates costly creation of variations of Assets through the use of Digital Masters.
DAM automates workflow steps and communication.

WHAT is not part of DAM?
WHAT is DAM but isn‘t called DAM?
DAM is part of ECM (Enterprise Content Management).
ECM encompasses all data centric solutions of an enterprise. ECM is not a product category but a concept.
For example DAM intersects with Web Content Management (WCM).
MAM, BAM (Media/Brand Asset Management) ...are „flavors“ of DAM for the Media companies (e.g. Publishers) and Marketing operations.
MOM/MRM/EMM (Marketing Operations/Resource Management, Enterprise Marketing Management) ...start out with the overall marketing processes of budgeting and campaign management. DAM is a granular part of it.
DAM is not limited to any particular market or application. It is an enabling technology and solution.

DAM Symposium New York

2005-04-11T11:54:00.000-04:00

May 9 and 10 in New York: Henry Setwart DAM symposium. If you want to find out as much as you can about DAM in just two days, it's the place to go. The good thing about this event is that it usually is very informative and not just a commercial expo, you can get mucho insight! And meet the DAM gurus of course such as Michael Moon or Jennifer Neumann. They have finally incorporated marketing issues and panels this year, which makes total sense, as DAM and marketing go hand in hand.
To see the many showcases and panels and workshops they are offering go to http://www.damusers.com

New Cumulus Updates & Canto article

2005-04-07T08:09:00.000-04:00

News from the Canto website: Cumulus Internet Options have just been updated so that they now work fine with Cumulus 6.5.
At my company mediaqueen we work with the Business Server Solution that features the Option Internet Client Pro so I've just tried out the new update and can now securely recommend it to you Cumulkus users out there.
I totally love working with Internet Client Pro because I hate all these emails with large attachments that go back and forth and clutter up my hard disk..I'm sure you know the feeling. Internet collaboration is one fine invention, but of course it's nearly worthless if you don't have version control. I might elaborate on that one later this month - there are many solutions out there that cliam to offer version control but you need a diploma to figure out how it works. I find that part of the workflow works great in Cumulus - I do miss a kind of a chat or message board though. Unfortunatley my Java knowledge is close to zero, so I'm patiently waiting for a developer to write an add-on....

on another note I've just come across an interesting article in Newspaper & Technology, an interview with Canto's CEO. You can find it here: http://www.newsandtech.com/issues/2005/04-05/pt/04-05_ononeone.htm
Quite a bit of behind the scenes info in that one - finally I found out why Canto was a bit slow on the OS X porting way back when.
Talking about Apple: Think Secret still states that Tiger will be available in April... whenever it is released I can just hope it's better than the first Panther was....or even the last 10.3 version for that matter.

Premiere

2005-03-23T07:47:00.000-05:00

This is the beginning of the Cumulus and DAM blog. My intention is to inform you about the latest Canto Cumulus news and developments and also to give readers some insight into DAM (Digital Asset Management) and related subjects. Feel free to comment and share your experience.
Came here by coincidence and ask yourself: what is Digital Asset Management? Well in short, a DAM software is a tool for organizing, storing and retrieving content in digital format. This is something every organization in today's digital world needs, and I am focussing on Canto Cumulus in this blog as it is the market leader and used all over the world.
DAM in general can be quite an interesting and often disputed subject, so I should have quite a lot to write about. Stay tuned and stop digital chaos!