Hi Megan,
DAM systems come in several flavors, from open source (low software cost, often
higher maintenance cost in terms of learning curves and IT), to basic image
management solutions (don't do much in terms of metadata but will display image
thumbnails and provide a little organization), workgroup solutions (something a
relatively small number of people would use to collaborate on projects), and
enterprise solutions (which can scale to huge size and span several corporate
locations). Whether you decide to host your software or use
software-as-a-service also impacts the price.
Once you know what flavor(s) of DAM you might like, price is usually determined
either by a per-seat or per-asset basis -- for example, you could purchase a
hosted workgroup solution for up to 25 concurrent users and 100,000 assets or
pay more to allow up to 50 users to concurrently access a system of 200,000
assets.
Since all of the above probably isn't helpful to you, I will add that it seems
like many museums opt either for open source, workgroup solutions, or
enterprise-level solutions. I agree with Perian that a solution will probably
run from $10K-$250K, depending on the size of your organization, your digital
repository, and what bells and whistles you need. There are solutions around
$12K that will allow you to organize and catalog your images but aren't
terribly scalable as new staff members want to use the system and new images
are added. There are also very expensive systems that run upwards of $200K but
will allow you to stream videos, convert speech and images to text, and support
workflow functionalities (e.g. approving/rejecting assets for a project within
the system, sending assets to other users, etc). I'm sorry there's no
quick-and-easy answer available.
Best,
Megan
Megan McGovern
Digital Asset Specialist
Corning Museum of Glass
607.438.5329?office (new)
607.684.5890 cell
mcgovernmh at cmog.org
-Original Message-
From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of
Perian Sully
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2011 3:55 PM
To: Museum Computer Network Listserv
Subject: Re: [MCN-L] DAM pricing
Hi Megan:
It really depends on what you want to do and how big your institution is. On
the low end, you can anticipate something in the 15-20K range. On the high end,
up to several hundred thousand.
There are also a bunch of open source dams available, but you'll have to factor
in the cost of hardware (true for the commercial products, too).
Sorry for the non-answer, but if you're able to provide more specifics about
the size of your institution and what you want the DAMS to do, someone might be
able to help fine-tune the numbers.
~Perian
On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 12:28 PM, Megan Brett wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> I've been following the conversation about Digital Asset Mgmt systems
> with interest, as it's something my site is starting to think seriously about.
> I've been asked to try and pull together some figures, but I'm having
> a bit of trouble. Would anyone be willing to share a range figure with me?
>
> Thanks much,
>
> Megan Brett
>
