Open Text Corporation, the pre-eminent provider of enterprise content management (ECM) software, today announced Open Text Media Management 7, a major upgrade to its industry leading digital asset management solution, including a completely new user interface that makes finding, accessing and managing large volumes of digital media assets fast and easy.
Media Management 7 also delivers powerful new process automation capabilities designed to help companies optimise media operations, improve business agility and increase control over digital media content.
With Media Management 7, Open Text is delivering a platform designed for the digital media era, where the technology to create and consume digital media - for example on tablets or mobile phones - far exceeds the ability of organisations to manage, control, and efficiently distribute the rich media assets involved. The new solution allows an entire organisation to produce, use, and publish digital media and automate the associated processes. In turn, this lowers costs and puts the media to use more profitably, with reduced liability stemming from inappropriate use or distribution of content.
As digital media has become pervasive, the need for media management is expanding from roots in the media and entertainment industry to encompass many additional market segments, including marketing organisations, publishing, museums and historical archives, manufacturing and distribution as well as industries that require storage of media evidence, such as insurance, legal and healthcare.
Forrester Research noted this trend in a 9 October 2009 report entitled: "Adaptive Brand Management" on the marketing use case for media management. In a truly adaptive organisation with global scale, however, the need to share and protect assets becomes paramount. Brand strategists will find asset management systems critical for delivering approved strategy assets out to the field for use, while brand advocates will love the availability of usable assets at their fingertips that are approved and ready for deployment instantly.
To enable it to step into this expanded role, Media Management 7 delivers an intuitive user experience that makes digital media tasks straightforward and convenient. The user experience was shaped based on work with top UI designers and extensive testing with multiple target user groups, and sets the bar for enterprise software design and usability.
Open Text will further enhance the user experience in Media Management 7 by integrating content analytics technology from recently acquired Nstein Technologies. Using patented technology, Nstein's software creates a "semantic fingerprint" for content to unlock its inherent value, making it more findable, visible, understandable, organised and analysis-ready.
ECM, WCM and mobile integration
To meet the needs of global enterprises, Media Management 7 delivers integration with the Open Text ECM Suite and leverages shared services, the defined layer of integration for all ECM Suite offerings. This allows media creators and publishers in the enterprise to take advantage of workflow and life cycle management capabilities of the ECM Suite in a simple and intuitive fashion. A key advantage of this integration is that it allows companies to customise and evolve their processes without requiring database or code changes. It also delivers integration with Open Text's industry leading Web content management solutions, including the recently announced Vignette Content Management 8, as well as the ability for users to work with digital media from mobile devices using Open Text Everywhere.
"The impact of digital media is being felt in all walks of life and business. With this explosion in rich media comes the need for better tools for managing it all," commented Guy Hellier, Vice-President of Digital Media, Open Text. "With Media Management 7 we are changing the game by delivering new levels of usability along with the ability to seamlessly integrate digital media into operations and to orchestrate how media is created, retrieved, reused and published. This is particularly important to deliver engaging and consistent user experience via any channel, including Web and mobile experience."
Raises the Bar on Web 2.0
In a recently completed review of media management needs and technologies, Mukul Krishna, Global Director, Digital Media at analyst firm Frost & Sullivan, found broad desire among customers for media workflows that could be automated but still easily modified, along with a need for these sophisticated IT systems to match the usability expectations the modern workforce has come to expect in a Web 2.0 era.
"I am pleased to see that Open Text Media Management 7 has been designed with these requirements as high priorities - its process automation engine together with its new UI is certain to garner well deserved attention among a broad set of potential customers," Krishna added.
Organisations facing an explosion of digital media content will find that Open Text Media Management 7 offers them significant return on investment and delivers a number of tangible business benefits, including:
* Optimised media operations that engage all the participants in the collaborative process, ensuring that the right stakeholders are involved at the right time and that media files can be reused quickly and reliably.
* Increased business agility to take advantage of emerging opportunities, and automate publishing and distribution processes.
* Greater control and reduced risk of violating usage restrictions based on licensing agreements or copyrights.
With over a decade of experience in the field of digital asset and media management, Open Text has deployed hundreds of media management solutions in publishing, media and entertainment companies, public sector agencies, and enterprise marketing organisations globally. Customers include Meredith Corporation, Grupo Televisa, Compassion International, SAP and Columbia Sportswear, to name a few.
For further information, please contact Rob Shaw: tel +27 83 626-3811, fax +27 86 646 4178, e-mail rshaw@opentext.com.
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