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Digital Asset Management Article

<a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-widens-its-dxp-stack-with-widen-acquires-dam-and-pim-capabilities/">Acquia</a> – the digital experience platform built with open source <a href="https://www.drupal.org/" target="_blank">Drupal</a> at its core – continues to innovate around its award-winning digital asset management (DAM) capabilities.
Yesterday, it announced new enhancements have been added to its <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/acquia-dam">Acquia DAM</a> (formerly <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-widens-its-dxp-stack-with-widen-acquires-dam-and-pim-capabilities/">Widen</a>), empowering marketing and creative leaders to find and collaborate on digital assets faster.
The new capabilities – which revolve around search, sharing, and analytics – are slated to help marketing and creative teams maximize the value of their content investments across brands, regions, campaigns, and personas, even as budgets are squeezed. 
“Marketing and creative teams turn to DAM systems to rein in content chaos and gain insight into how their content performs, particularly across global brand portfolios,” said <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-and-the-art-of-the-possible-interview-with-chief-market-officer-jennifer-griffin-smith/">Jennifer Griffin Smith</a>, Chief Market Officer at Acquia. “The new Acquia DAM updates empower teams to create, find, and share assets faster, giving them better control over revenue-generating digital marketing campaigns and the ability to ensure better brand consistency.” 
<h2>Giving marketers and creatives more DAM power </h2>
As Acquia outlined in its press release, marketing and creative teams are responsible for building and maintaining increasingly larger and more complex catalogs of digital assets. They need to be able to find assets quickly so they can get campaigns and products to market faster, understand which content performs best so they can use it again (or create more content like it), and drive brand consistency.
The new updates to Acquia DAM help customers rise to these challenges with:
<ul>
<li>Enhanced search experience: A redesigned search experience presents teams with more relevant results and filtering capabilities, enabling them to find the assets they need faster so they can launch campaigns and products faster. Redesigned cards on the search page display file naming conventions, making asset identification simpler and clearer.</li>
<li>More options for sharing assets: Teams can now share results for common searches to support better cross-team collaboration, so colleagues can see asset options in real time, regardless of their location. Users can copy and paste a link to search results, which includes search terms, sort, pagination, and filters applied. Also, new asset share links give the recipient the choice to pick the size and format they need.</li>
<li>Keyword and tag improvements: Teams can leverage tags for improved keyword search, making assets simpler to find. Entry of keywords now uses a familiar tag UI, with clickable tags on each asset, directing users to a search results page with all assets sharing the same tag. Admins retain editing control over these tags. This feature can help teams more efficiently manage very large collections of content assets.</li>
<li>Increased analytical insights: Acquia DAM analytics enhancements give teams faster access to asset usage and performance insights via an improved backend data pipeline. New asset insight charts provide more options to filter and group asset data. Asset insights now has API endpoints to connect with other marketing data in a data warehouse or business intelligence tool. This directly supports marketers who want to understand how content is being used and how well it’s performing so they can focus on the best-performing assets.</li>
</ul>
<h2>A modular, composable platform</h2>
Acquia DAM is available standalone or within Acquia DXP, and supports composable strategies through integrations with other Acquia and third-party marketing products. It is foundational to the industry’s only open digital experience platform, which brings together content and data to create world-class customer experiences. 
You can learn more about <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/acquia-dam">Acquia DAM,</a> view the new <a href="https://www.acquia.com/blog/acquia-dam-search">Acquia DAM search experience</a>, and explore how customers are using Acquia DAM – including <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/case-studies/crayola">Crayola</a>, <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/case-studies/livewire">LiveWire</a>, <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/case-studies/novavax">Novavax</a>, and <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/case-studies/san-francisco-international-airport">San Francisco International Airport</a> 
<h2>About Acquia</h2>
Acquia empowers the world’s most ambitious brands to create digital customer experiences that matter. With open source Drupal at its core, the Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP) enables marketers, developers, and IT operations teams at thousands of global organizations to rapidly compose and deploy digital products and services that leverage their content and data assets to engage customers personally and at scale, enhance conversions, and help businesses stand out. Learn more at <a href="https://www.acquia.com/">https://acquia.com</a>.

Acquia DAM Bolsters Search, Share, and Analytics Capabilities

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Acquia has every DAM reason to be running a victory lap right now – and its DAM has something to do with it.
Recently, the Drupal-powered DXP announced that its <a href="https://www.acquia.com/products/marketing-cloud/dam" target="_blank">Widen Digital Asset Management (DAM)</a> solution was named a "Leader" in <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/reports/forrester-wave-digital-asset-management" target="_blank">The Forrester Wave™: Digital Asset Management For Customer Experience, Q1 2022 Report</a>. The analyst firm's research evaluated the 14 most significant DAM vendors against 27 criteria grouped into three categories: current offering, strategy, and market presence.
While this news comes fresh off the Forrester presses, it's augmented by the recent publishing of the <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/report/gartner-dxp-magic-quadrant?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=ppc_google_bof_mc_2022&amp;utm_content=7013a000002hl4dAAA&amp;utm_term=ppc_google_bof_mc_2022&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQiA95aRBhCsARIsAC2xvfwt8tHfpiJWirnXF0U4tNCgxIL4EoPamKncFewhJltgH7JITnH0kTUaAtQ7EALw_wcB" target="_blank">2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms (DXP)</a>, where Acquia continues to tighten the race for leadership with <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/adobe-acquires-video-collaboration-platform-frame-io/">Adobe</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-partners-with-google-cloud-to-take-experimentation-to-the-next-level/">Optimizely</a>. 
<h2>Broadening DXP with DAM</h2>
Last year, Acquia <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-widens-its-dxp-stack-with-widen-acquires-dam-and-pim-capabilities/" target="_blank">acquired Widen</a> in an effort to bring its best-of-breed DAM and PIM capabilities to its expanding ecosystem. As a platform, Widen has been focused on large organizations where marketing teams required a more comprehensive <a href="https://www.widen.com/blog/digital-asset-management" target="_blank">digital asset</a> strategy for managing rich media, product information, and marketing content into a single workflow – and all accessible via an intuitive user interface. 
With content being at the heart of digital experiences, acquiring Widen was a well-calculated move for Acquia. According to the Forrester report, Widen continues to lead the way with clear strengths around search and marketing features, rounding out Acquia's digital experience platform model and filling the critical gaps of workflow and asset management capabilities.
<h2>Scoring high marks across all Forrester criteria</h2>
Widen earned the highest possible scores across Forrester's nine DAM criteria, including AI metadata extraction, search, digital rights management, version control, content performance analytics, usability and user interface, creative toolset integration, planned enhancements, and commercial model.
The report also stated that Widen offers a "clear commercial model and transparent pricing," as well as "superior capabilities with its creative toolset integration" and "solid digital rights management capabilities including integrations into third-party DRM applications." It also concluded that Widen's roadmap of planned enhancements, which are influenced by customer feedback multiple times a year, is a key advantage. 
"We believe that Forrester's findings prove the strength of Widen's DAM technology when combined with the Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP)," said Jake Athey, VP of Marketing at Widen. "The addition of Widen to Acquia DXP brings our customers enhanced capabilities around rich media and product information content, providing even more opportunities to build world-class digital experiences."
You can access a complimentary copy of the report here: <a href="https://www.acquia.com/resources/reports/forrester-wave-digital-asset-management" target="_blank">The Forrester Wave™: Digital Asset Management for Customer Experience, Q1, 2022</a>.
<h2>About Acquia</h2>
Acquia empowers the world's most ambitious brands to create digital customer experiences that matter. With open source Drupal at its core, the Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP) enables marketers, developers and IT operations teams at thousands of global organizations to rapidly compose and deploy digital products and services that engage customers, enhance conversions and help businesses stand out. Learn more at <a href="https://www.acquia.com/" target="_blank">https://acquia.com</a>.

Acquia's Widen Named a "Leader" in Forrester Wave Report for Digital Asset Management for Customer Experience

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Talk about welcome news.
Earlier in December, <a href="https://www.optimizely.com/" target="_blank">Optimizely</a> – a leading digital experience platform (DXP) – announced a definitive agreement to purchase <a href="https://welcomesoftware.com/" target="_blank">Welcome</a>, a content marketing (CMP), marketing resource management (MRM), and digital asset management (DAM) platform.
Yes, that's a lot of three-lettered acronyms for one sentence...
While the DXP juggernaut is no stranger to acquisitions (they were, in fact, <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/episerver-rebrands-as-optimizely-following-acquisition/">purchased by Episerver in 2020</a> but rebranded under the Optimizely name), this one provides a glimpse of the company's ambition to win the minds and hearts of internal marketers.
According to Welcome's press release, the combination will empower marketing teams at brands across the globe to drive real business value through better customer experiences.
“We believe a world-class customer experience starts with an outstanding marketer experience,” said Alex Atzberger, CEO of Optimizely. “By combining Welcome’s campaign planning, content production, and asset management capabilities with Optimizely’s existing breadth of digital experience solutions, we empower marketers to rapidly launch campaigns and control the optimization of every digital touchpoint which results in growth for the business.”
As the deal is set to close before the New Year, it's clear that Optimizely is making a 2022 resolution to focus more on the discrete needs of marketers, who are chiefly responsible for driving customer experience. With the rise of digital tools and hybrid work environments, marketers are becoming the "engines" of business growth by shaping consumer engagement. At the same time, they are being forced to adapt and respond to a fluid digital landscape, where a fragmented stack is arresting their ability to deliver personalized, relevant content and experiences at scale.
Bottom line: Optimizely aims to improve the marketer experience by adding Welcome's CMP, MRM, and DAM capabilities to their expanding ecosystem.
<h2>Combining marketing, content management, digital commerce, and personalization</h2>
As a four-time <a href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210325005585/en/Welcome-a-NewsCred-Brand-Named-a-Leader-Now-4-Years-Running-in-the-2021-Gartner-Magic-Quadrant-for-Content-Marketing-Platforms" target="_blank">Leader on the Gartner Magic Quadrant</a>, Welcome has carved a strong niche in the small but growing cadre of Content Marketing Platforms (CMP).
As Gartner noted in their most recent report, "Welcome’s vision as a marketing orchestration software, combining the capabilities of a CMP, MWM, DAM, offers promise." This positioning certainly made the platform a more attractive target for Optimizely.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/12/gartner_mq_cmp-971x1024.png" alt="Gartner Magic Quadrant, 2021 for CMP" />
By combining Welcome's capabilities with Optimizely's suite of content management and digital commerce solutions, marketers will now have enhanced tools for a wide range of applications – all in a unified platform. This includes the "Holy Grail" of experimentation, personalization, and recommendations that have often remained elusive for marketing professionals and teams.
Under the Optimizely banner, marketers will be able to leverage Welcome's features on an evolutionary scale, allowing them to accelerate the end-to-end marketing lifecycle from concept to execution. This will allow users and teams to plan, create, and collaborate on campaigns and publish across multiple channels to reach the right audiences. They will also have unprecedented control and transparency to manage content delivery without relying on the support of IT or development.
The combined set of capabilities should be a force multiplier for Optimizely, enabling marketers to grow revenue by scaling best-in-class data-driven tools such as A/B testing and content recommendations, augmented by Welcome's content marketing processes. Marketers will also be able to easily share results across their organization, providing greater insight into the impact of their marketing investment.
“We could not be more excited to be joining the Optimizely family,” said Shafqat Islam, CEO and co-founder of Welcome. “We’ve made it our mission to transform the way marketers work, by delivering a purpose-built solution to orchestrate all of marketing. Now, together with Optimizely, we believe we are unifying two category-leading solutions to see that mission through.”
<h2>A string of strategic acquisitions</h2>
As the DXP category becomes more crowded, enterprise vendors are clawing their way to the top of the mountain. In Gartner's <a href="https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3995917/magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms" target="_blank">2021 Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms</a>, Optimizely found itself chasing the heels of both <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/acquia-upgrades-open-dxp-capabilities-to-expand-composable-enterprise-features/">Acquia</a> and <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/adobe-acquires-video-collaboration-platform-frame-io/">Adobe</a> in pursuit of the crown.
To enhance their DXP completeness of vision and gain competitive ground, all three platforms have been scooping up strategic technologies – including Optimizely's 2021 <a href="https://www.cmscritic.com/optimizely-acquires-customer-data-platform-zaius/">purchase of Zauis</a>, a leading customer data platform (CDP).
Adding this all-important data layer gave Optimizely a needed edge, but the purchase of Welcome is key. Not only does it signal a renewed focus on the role of the marketer, but it repositions the power of the platform on the marketer's experience. Providing an integrated, end-to-end lifecycle solution for managing content, assets, and resources – and amplifying it with the commerce and optimization features of a proven DXP – could be a real gamechanger for Optimizely. We'll be watching as the next steps unfold.
<h2>About Optimizely</h2>
Optimizely is a leading digital experience platform (DXP), equipping teams with the tools and insights they need to create and optimize in new and novel ways. Now, companies can operate with data-driven confidence to create hyper-personalized experiences. Building sophisticated solutions has never been simpler. Optimizely’s 900+ partners and 1100+ employees in offices around the globe are proud to help more than 9,000 brands, including Toyota, Santander, eBay, KLM and Mazda, enrich their customer lifetime value, increase revenue and grow their brands.
<h2>About Welcome</h2>
Welcome transforms how marketers run marketing. It is the leading marketing orchestration platform used by the world’s most successful brands to strategically align teams, take the friction out of execution, and demonstrate meaningful results. Only Welcome offers a platform purpose-built for the complexities of modern marketing that can scale to support the largest teams in the world. It is a new layer of the marketing technology stack where marketers can work better together, connect other martech tools, and measure performance. Welcome unleashes the potential of marketing.

Optimizely's Acquisition of Welcome Signals Expanded Focus on Marketers

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Notre-DAM is an open-source Digital Asset Management platform targeted to the mid-market segment (digital libraries, micro-stock agencies, editorial teams, etc.).
The key features of Notre-DAM are:
<ul>
<li>multi-user, web-based application accessible from the most popular browsers</li>
<li>can manage images, video, audio and text</li>
<li>provides a customizable catalogue based on taxonomies and collections</li>
<li>full metadata support (EXIF, IPTC, XMP, Creative Commons, PLUS)</li>
<li>geo referencing and search, directly on a map</li>
<li>fully scalable, relies on a cluster of PCs for resource storage, processing, and delivery</li>
<li>provides a REST API for integration with other applications (e.g. CMSs)</li>
<li>distributed under the GPL v.3 licenseScreenshot: 
<img style="max-width:580px" title="notre-dam" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/notre-dam-580x306_zhohfp.png" /></li>
</ul>
More information (and an on-line demo) is available on the project's web site <a href="http://www.notre-dam.org">Notre-DAM.org</a>. A short <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMehvlhOPFY">video presentation is available too</a>.

Notre-DAM Beta released - an open source Digital Asset Management Platform

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