In May of this year, I blogged about IBM’s then up-coming Digital Asset Management integration with MediaBeacon. IBM started shipping that product on June 18, 2013 via electronic distribution and July 12 via CD. You can see the official announcement letter for details.
Here is a demo of MediaBeacon working directly with IBM Web Content Manager.
As I mentioned, the DAM solution is an integration with MediaBeacon R3volution Enterprise, so you must have access to a MediaBeaon server. You can install the MediaBeacon server software on your Portal server or on a standalone server. For development environments, combining Portal and MediaBeacon on the same server is fine. For production environments (authoring included), you will want a separate server for MediaBeacon. MediaBeacon software and documentation are included in the IBM software you can download (see below).
According to IBM’s best practices documentation, when using MediaBeacon and IBM Web Content Manager, you have three options for accessing and storing your digital media:
- Always store the asset in MediaBeacon. With this storage option, you can directly manage and update the asset, regardless of whether the content item is in draft state or is published. However, you must also ensure that the authoring, delivery, and web servers in the environment can access the MediaBeacon server to render the asset.
- Copy the asset into a web content library when the content item is created. With this option, you can syndicate the asset along with the content item, which can be useful in distributed authoring environments. But if you must modify the asset before you publish the content item, you must repeat the process of adding the updated asset from MediaBeacon.
- Preview the asset from MediaBeacon and then copy the asset into Web Content Manager when you publish the content item. With this option, the asset remains in MediaBeacon while the content is in draft state. When the content is published in a workflow that contains the Promote Digital Assets workflow action, the asset is copied to a web content library and rendered normally.
The preferred storage option is to preview the asset from MediaBeacon and then copy the asset into Web Content Manager when you publish the content item. This approach has several benefits:
- Because the asset is stored in MediaBeacon while the content item is in draft state, any changes to the asset are immediately visible in the draft content.
- When the content is approved and published, a workflow stage copies the asset into a web content library. As part of the library, the asset can be versioned, syndicated to delivery servers, and rendered through Web Content Manager. Storing the asset in a web content library also ensures that changes to the asset in MediaBeacon are not automatically passed through to the published content.
- When the published asset is stored in a library, unauthenticated users can view the asset without the need for configured access to the MediaBeacon server.
IBM has included Digital Asset Management into two new editions of the following products:
- IBM Web Content Manager Rich Media Edition V8.0.0.1
- IBM Customer Experience Suite Rich Media Edition V8.0.0.1
As with other products, IBM is selling these editions using the Processor Value Unit (PVU) method, so you will pay a license fee based on how many processors on which these editions are installed.
Documentation for these new editions can be found in the Fix Pack Supplements section of the portal wiki. Finally, you can access quick start guides for both editions here: Quick Start Guides for Rich Media Edition