The Coming Acronym Crisis

25-Jun-2009 — Comments — none yet

As I talk to people in the content-technology industry (if I may call it that), I’m struck by a common thread that has begun to emerge in conversations involving roadmaps and futures. Vendors are beginning to unshackle themselves from acronyms. Let me spare you the suspense and take you straight to the disturbing punchline: I believe we are headed for an acronym crisis.

I’ve heard Digital Asset Management vendors say that DAM is not a good acronym any more, because it conjures a narrow, obsolete picture of the problem space. DAM platforms have grown. Offerings like MediaBeacon R3volution, MediaBin (now owned by Autonomy), North Plains Telescope, and others, are beginning to include functionalities that are, in many cases, rather ECM-like. Likewise, many WCM products – Alterian Immediacy, PaperThinCommonSpot, and many others — continue to incorporate more and more DAM-like features (e.g., lightbox previews, inline image editing, renditions, image metadata support, Flash previews). Some products, like Day Software‘s Communiqué, have such smooth integration between WCM and DAM offerings that it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other one ends.