Sharepoint and Rich Media Assets

Admittedly, the topic this week is a little on the dry side, but I will attempt to distill the information in an entertaining manner. Let's pretend you have been asked to develop a workflow and digital asset management system for a creative agency like a photo studio. While many of the stakeholders in the organization may be comfortable with Microsoft-style applications, Sharepoint does not easily morph into a one stop DAM solution for dealing creative assets which can include RAW files,TIFs, JPEGs and other Adobe centric file formats.

What can you do? What can Sharepoint do seamlessly? An excellent article by the Content Wrangler delineates these points offering pros and cons as well as possible workarounds. One solution for the handling of rich media assets seems to be Mediarich by Equilibrium. By adding this to your existing Sharepoint application, you can truly enjoy integration of a powerful creative DAM with all the perks desired by the masses without the filetype and file size limitations inherent to Sharepoint.

The bigger question is whether you should attempt to retrofit a system because it makes sense for the organization or whether you should require old dogs to learn new tricks that will prove ultimately beneficial in time savings and efficiency.