Balancing the budget

Digital Media Management solutions are complex software tools that enterprises need to choose carefully. When making a choice, you are trying to balance your budget and the cost.

If you are looking for a Digital Media Management solution for your enterprise then you have probably already come to the conclusion that they are complex software tools. It is likely that you are also looking at your budget and the cost and starting to worry about the gap between the two. This post will introduce the various purchase models and offer some pointers to guide you in your software selection journey. We will consider the infrastructure requirements, the features, the various purchasing options, and the implications of your choice.

Cost

One of the simplest ways to bring down the cost is to commit to a SaaS, or cloud-based product. The models offered by the various vendors in the cloud typically offer better pricing models.

Cloud-based SaaS solutions abstract away the need to concern yourself about the IT infrastructure, and they’re more affordable. The proponents of on-site systems often claim that they perform better and they’re more secure. Obviously we at FileSpin are biased and think the level of security that a well-setup SaaS offers is far superior to a hastily constituted in-house IT security team.

The different models often come attached with different price brackets, as summarized below:

Broad Overview of the Pros, Cons, and Costings

The SaaS advantage

When you consider the cost of maintaining your own infrastructure and staff to support it, it is easy to see why a SaaS results in smaller monthly payments. Let’s take a deep dive into where the cost-savings come from with a SaaS.

Significant savings can be made with the SaaS model because:

• There is no need to maintain IT infrastructure
• all maintenance and IT support is the responsibility of the SaaS provider
• updates and new releases are handled by your SaaS provider
• cloud-based servers support remote and scattered teams

SaaS Features

The range of features offered by the various SaaS vendors is vast and it is going to be the feature set that contributes significantly to your final decision.

The typical feature requirements:

• Intuitive one-click upload and download of all media assets
• Image conversion tools
• Video conversion tools
• Dynamic resizing of images (for e-commerce) optimized by platform (e.g. mobile v P.C.)
• Content Delivery Network (CDN)
• Auto-generated download links for media assets
• Delivery of high-resolution images (with image zoom option for e-commerce)
• Search & tagging (supports metadata IPTC, Exif, XMP)
• Access control and security
• Backup cycles

SaaS Media Management Services are typically well suited to enterprises that typically already have a cloud-based philosophy to suit their global audiences. Advantages include:

• Scalable tooling for:
  • Conversions and resizing
  • Content delivery
• Backups:
  • Cloud-based short-, mid-, and long-term storage
• Image conversion
  • Expect SaaS to support the most to-date conversion tooling

Thoughts on on-premise software

One of the major issues created by the on-premises systems is that they long ago entered an arms race that they can’t escape. This “cold war” has evolved complicated software that requires a large investment on the part of your team to become competent users. The issues such systems force on you include:

• Fixed workflows
  • Many on-premises software enforce a rigid media management flow
  • The workflow is rarely adaptable
• Performance
  • The hurry-up-and-wait experience linked to poorly architected systems plagues many on-prem software
• Over-engineering
  • Massive learning curve (you are joining in on the consequences of the “cold war”)
  • Non-intuitive interfaces

Conclusion

The size and budget for your IT infrastructure and support team are going to determine whether you can consider an on-prem software. With that consideration accounted for, price, feature set, and the legal compliance requirements specific to your business are going to be the deciding factors.

There is no question that a well-designed software can prevent your design and development teams from drowning in the massive volume of digital assets that enterprises accumulate, whether they are media, events or content publishing businesses, retail, travel or tourism enterprises.

Choosing a vendor is an exciting journey to be on and we hope you are enjoying the process. If you wish to take a deeper look at why we believe that the goliaths so often fail the end-user, see our previous blog post.