Has maintaining your assets become a struggle? Wouldn’t you love to have a media-suite that could perfectly optimize your media processes? You don’t need to look any further: eyebase mediasuite DAM system is the best solution there is.
eyebase’s mediasuite DAM optimizes media processes in a wide range of industries. They have been providing the best DAM (Digital Asset Management) services for commercial photographers, marketing and public relations, brand managers, corporate institutions, and NGOs. eyebase mediasuite is a platform independent media and image database software system, that manages, organizes, as well as distributes media files.
eyebase’s innovative DAM software is aimed to optimize work-flows with audio, image, video or document files, and can even make the content available to the third parties via the internet. From straight forward importing files and keyword indexing to delivering files to the targeted distribution, eyebase is an easy-to-use system which often exceeds its clients’ expectations for efficiency.
- Working with media files has become increasingly problematic:
- File sizes are large, which makes them hard to share
- Files are distributed on computers, external hard disks and network drives, each with different policies and often untagged (i.e., has no metadata attached to quickly find the file)
- Work sites are spread out so there are many parties involved, including marketing departments, product managers, external agencies, consultants, subcontractors, etc.… This makes organization cumbersome
- A single file may have been stored multiple times leading to redundancy and confusion
What a DAM System can do:
- Keep files in a central storage location with configurable access by different parties
- Keep files with automatically generated metadata to allow for quick recognition
- Having files continuously available and accessible to internal and external participants and even to other systems
- Help organize work-flows when multiple participants are involved
- Maintain controlled versions of files
eyebase’s Inception Story
Designing software around the life cycle of pictures was extremely challenging in the early years, given the fact that not even the JPG standard or picture file type existed yet. CMB Informationsystem Inc., the company behind the innovative image database, as media management software was known back then, used fractal compression methods with hardware compression support to store and show picture files in their first application designed to manage images for art galleries. But soon museums around the world discovered how much more useful a personal computer could be with a software that could display pictures. In the early 90’s CMB’s software product “artefact” dominated the museum industry in the German speaking countries in Europe, with well known museums still using it today. Soon “artefact” was taking over corporate archives at large corporations and managing bulk records (with a strong focus on digital media content) for such high profile customers as BMW.
After CMB became a industry leader in its domain, it was ready to venture into something new and bring about real change. Thus, CMB entered the internet and was one of the first European organizations to experiment within it on a commercial level. In the early 90’s CMB built one of the first websites for customers like Compaq and Olivetti Computers. By making media available to a much wider audience, the internet era launched an extreme upswing in image database software. CMB’s website that made the contents of the BMW corporate archive available to the general public was an award winning milestone for the company.
With a steady base of museums and archives together with the fast-growing demand for digital asset management in the corporate world, CMB made a very important decision in 2004. From that point forward, CMB focussed on building a new software for commercial purposes including: brand management, marketing, public relations, organizing and distributing digital media.
Not only was the CMB team creative with out-of-the-box ideas, these ideas were also backed up with more than a decade of experience working with image databases. (The cumulative sum of its expert employees’ experience with DAM projects totals more than 100 years!) This fact, together with the design and programming processes of their new product, “eyebase” is more than any other company can offer.
There are many new systems on the market today that can solve problems like digital asset management with a bright and shiny appearance. Only a closer look will reveal the work of an experienced team. After customizing hundreds of projects, the team at CMB, with their flagship product “eyebase” has been focussing on new trends in MAM and DAM (media- or digital asset management).
The Influential Pathfinder
Wolfgang Kaufmann, CEO of eyebase, founded CMB in 1992. After completing his MBA studies in Austria, USA and Italy, the adventurist and sportsman financed his travels to remote areas of the world by holding speeches and slideshows for sponsors as well as selling photographs and stories to magazines. He then worked for an international US corporation as an IT consultant, opening offices in Eastern European Countries as the iron curtain fell in the 80’s.
In 1992, an art gallery with several subsidiaries in different countries, approached him with a project to design a gallery management software with a strong focus on supporting sales processes. Needless to say, storing and displaying images of the art pieces was an essential part of the software.
Combining his interest in art, photography and IT, Kaufmann designed “Portfolio Manager,” the first cornerstone in conquering the field of “image databases.” On the road to success, a number of spin-off businesses were founded and eventually sold, to support the company’s core business. Besides being a passionate serial entrepreneur, Kaufmann is a very active sportsman, engaging in all kinds of endurance and extreme sports and he still is an avid traveller.
Redirecting the Ways of Asset Management
CMB was one of the first companies which introduced Digital Asset Management Systems into daily office work. Digital cameras didn’t exist back then, but everyone was already used to Windows Explorer or Mac Finder and using local or network drives to manage, organize and view files.
In the quarter century, since Finder and Explorer were introduced, our daily work with computers has changed completely. Today we are flooded with picture files, documents and videos. As studies have shown, a significant portion of labour costs (about US$8,000 per year) of a creative office worker is spent on searching for the right content for his or her job. And less than half of these searches are successful! So today, we are now used to keeping files named “offer.pdf,” “offer_final.pdf” and “offer_final2.pdf” in a folder structure that is either organized by customers, by projects or chronologically or in worst case in combination. The resulting mess is then put on a “Dropbox” or some shared cloud storage. People think it is an advantage to share content this way. But in reality, it shows that the only thing worse than a mess is having that mess in multiple places. Also, today’s level of communication technology is not meant to handle larger files. In many cases, pictures or videos cannot even be sent by email anymore. And if they are distributed, multiple copies of the same file get stored in different places which makes it impossible to keep track of current, valid and older versions.
The trend of having DAM systems to tackle these problems will continue for some more years and will be heavily facilitated by web technologies in near future.
Innovation at its Best
The team at eyebase believes, and rightly so, that it is their hard work and unrivalled experience with hundreds of DAM projects that allows them to predict their customer’s requirements and solve them in a manner that far exceeds the client’s expectations. Currently, eyebase holds three patented features, two of which make working with files more efficient and easy. The third patent allows users to automatically turn information into knowledge through brain-like associations, a feature that BMW has licensed for a large scale project for example.
As eyebase was amongst the first to create automatically published websites based on databases, technical innovations have been their driving force ever since. The main goal of DAM systems is to make office work more efficient and cut down on time-consuming file handling. This creates a lot of room for innovative work-flows and automatisms.
On the other hand, a DAM system not only caters order but also stores those well-managed files in a single, centralized place. So rather than taking them from there and sending them via email or copying them for other applications, it is possible to allow access to additional participants or third party applications such as content management systems, ERP systems or e-commerce systems. Thus, innovative functionality grants access to files and a very powerful, yet simple interface makes it possible for third party users or applications to access content stored in eyebase.
Tips for Budding Entrepreneurs
Being ahead of your time is quite normal for people like us who catch on to new things easily. It is staying ahead of trends that is the challenge. Difficult situations, which will happen over and over again, dealing with periods of low motivation or with setbacks, is hard to handle for most people. Ideally an entrepreneur has been blessed with the natural traits of self assurance, endurance, and a lot of optimism. But external factors are also of immanent importance. Having a helpful and understanding family in the background is as essential as having hard working and trustworthy employees. I am also convinced, that staying fit, both physically and mentally is the key to being successful in life in general. As an entrepreneur, you cannot hide when times get rough. Instead, it is in precisely these moments when you need to stand up, face reality and deal with it. I personally use the majority of my free time to contemplate the“philosophical aspects of life.” This forms the basis of my personality. This brings quietness, consciousness and a solid foundation. On the other hand, I try to push myself physically. As a semi-professional freeride skier, mountaineer, skydiver, freediver, paraglider and mountain biker, I need to exercise both my physical and mental capabilities. And for me the ideal way to practice is when a lot of fun is involved. This practice not only serves to balance my work life, but also as training for all sorts of difficult situations. If as a freediver I manage to stay under water interacting with sharks for five minutes on one breath of air, I know that I will be able to motivate myself to manage daily problems more easily – asserts Wolfgang Kaufmann.
Leaving no Stones Unturned
Building an enterprise is not easy, nor is maintaining it through life’s ups and downs. At eyebase, they believe that every enterprise struggles in its initial phase, and that only unique, innovative ideas can save the enterprise from sinking when the seas gets rough and challenging.
“Success” is already happening when one overcomes that initial phase. And the ones who stay focussed, employ more ideas and innovations, will get the most supporter, the most know how, and all of this will lead to a better recognition by the market and network with others over time. Listening to a customer’s hidden needs, combined with showing full dedication to one’s own employees is paramount for long-lasting success.