The Elephant in the Living Room: It’s About “Video Management AND…” | We Speak Digital Media.

After spending a week in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Showit’s clear that the demand for managing video – often referred to as “Media Asset Management” (MAM) and for managing all kinds of digital files “Digital Asset Management” (DAM) — has grown substantially in the past year.

NAB historically has been the show for media & entertainment companies to meet with technology vendors, see what’s new and plan their future. And while the crowd still has a large proportion of broadcasters, cable operators, media and entertainment executives, advertising agencies and the expected military/intelligence government agencies, NAB has, over the past 5 years, become much broader, more diverse, and now includes companies and organizations outside of these typical media & entertainment fields. Increasingly its attendees include consumer brands, manufacturers, publishers, financial & insurance companies, religious organizations and healthcare/medical companies as well.What’s behind this expansion?

Digital video. Lots of it.

Over the past few years, companies have been rapidly accumulating digital video. And in many cases, they’ve been growing that on top the base of archived analog video (tapes, and other forms) they’ve accumulated over the years.

But, while the major theme (hype) at this year’s NAB was “3D”, two others trends seemed more applicable and concrete:

1. “Video everywhere” – Open support for providing video on across all kinds of devices — mobile, smart, handheld, and the new iPad class of devices. From educational tracks as part of the NAB conference to vendor’s products on the exhibit floor, this appeared as increasingly real, and important, with money starting to flow towards technologies across the ecosystem that enable people to distributed and consume video everywhere.

Continues @http://wespeakdigitalmedia.com