The growing choices in image management systems
Managing images is becoming an increasingly important part of a retail operation--and lots of companies are springing up to serve that market, says a new report from researchers Future Image Inc. “Eighteen months ago there were two or three; today there are 20 vendors,” Tony Henning, senior analyst for Future Image, tells InternetRetailer.com
The benefit of so many vendors is that the price has dropped from a range of $35,000 to $50,000 for an image serving CPU a year and a half ago to $7,500 to $8,500 today, Future Image reports. The drawback is that making the right choice among such a range of vendors has become more difficult. “At a base level, they all do the same thing--automate the serving up of images and rich content,” Henning says. “But they all have their specific approach.”
Some offer hosted services, others offer in-house systems, some work with content delivery networks, some work behind the firewall in a batch mode and others in front of the firewall. “There are a lot of ways to skin that cat,” Henning says.
San Mateo, CA-based Future Image has just released a report on the market leaders, entitled--"Image Servers: Five Vendor Competitive Evaluation Profiles: ACD Systems Ltd., Adobe Systems Inc., Equilibrium Technologies Inc., LizardTech, Inc., and TrueSpectra Inc."--providing an in-depth examination of each company`s Image Server offering. All offer the ability to output images to the web and to print media. The report includes case studies of early adopters of the technology.
"Image servers are poised to become a strategic information management tool for publishers and enterprises,” Henning says. “They automate the preparation of visual content and serve it up over standard Internet protocols. No other tool offers the promise of serving up rich content across multiple access points, while scaling as required to meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving marketplace."
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