Prepress Technology March 2000
Vio, AGT team up on
outsourced DAM service
Staff Report
What do you get when you team up one of the leading providers of outsourced digital media asset management and archiving services and a company with a global-managed digital network dedicated to the graphics arts industry?
Answer: A digital asset management system that can virtually send an image once around the world. Meet M-Cast, the first service born to the alliance between Applied Graphics Technologies Inc. and Vio Worldwide Ltd.
First introduced at Seybold San Francisco, M-Cast is touted as a global digital media asset management system that will let graphics workgroups benefit from comprehensive media management, at low cost, anywhere in the world.
M-Cast couples AGT's Digital Link asset management technology and database management expertise with quick and secure file transfer courtesy of Vio's Internet Protocol-based Digital Graphics Network.
AGT's Digital Link system is a suite of modular software applications designed to create, customize and maintain extensive digital media databases using a standard Web browser over a local or wide area network.
Vio's network complements AGT's software with a managed production environment designed to assist publishing, printing and graphic arts companies.
In short, M-Cast service subscribers will be able to archive still images, video, and sound files in AGT's database, and gain access to it via Vio's secure global IP network, giving clients archive access anytime from anywhere without costly up-front investments in server and storage hardware and asset management software.
Subscribers will automatically become part of the Vio network, and will have a choice between Vio's ISDN2 service or DGN T1 lines.
Users pay a monthly service fee, which includes access to the Vio network and to the M-Cast system as well as a monthly storage allowance for their digital assets. Beyond that, the volume-sensitive rate structure lets users transfer files across the street or across the globe for 40 cents per megabyte for ISDN subcribers and 20 cents per megabyte for users with a T1 line.
It was back in 1996, said Steven Wood, director of business development for Vio, when the company began looking for a partner in its efforts to surround the globe with a sophisticated digital asset management system.
"We realized that there was already a large number of DAM systems on the market that were very good," he said, adding that Vio was looking for someone with expertise in how to manage media workflow. AGT's solid six-year track record with clients ranging from publishers to advertisers to advertising agencies, impressed Vio's leadership.
In August 1999, the deal was signed and M-Cast began its customer pilot phase shortly thereafter. Two major clients in the United Kingdom -- a large publishing conglomerate and a computer-related venture -- have been using M-Cast for the past five months.
By the end of March, Wood said, M-Cast should be ready for the general market.
Charged by the initial try-outs, there are many different ways companies can use M-Cast and make additional cash, Wood said.
"We are targeting our existing prepress printers clients, printers, graphic artists, publishers, ad agencies ñ companies that tend to be geographically dispersed," Wood explained. "We are talking with our major U.K. publisher client whose aspirations are to move toward the international market," Wood said.
M-Cast will manage as many as 170,000 images for this undisclosed customer, he said.
Eventually the client plans to sell images to other companies in the Unites States and abroad. M-Cast allows the publisher to control who gets access to what archived material, without ever having to leave his office, Wood said.